Unfortunately very true percy.
Pays to stay away from businesses with those people as directors IMO.
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She might be just plainly incompetent. I guess she clearly was good in playing politics, but this does not mean she is able to read and understand a balance sheet. Isn't the good book asking as to forgive those who don't know what they are doing? Describes basically most politicians around board tables.
Possibly plain incompetent. That begs the question how was she appointed. Guess it is plausible that Richina and Mainzeal wanted to have lackeys and appointed her in that role with foresight about what they were going to ask of the directors. But to have been a former PM, not sure if you can plead incompetence?
Former politicians around board tables is one of my sell signals for what its worth. Not many contribute anything positive bar name recognition although if that is a positive attribute is debatable.
There are exceptions. Had a chat with the mrs today about this. She is a successful director in her own right (not a politician thankfully), and was also of the opinion that directors need to be appointed on merit, not what office they have held. We discussed J.Key and thought him being former Minister of Tourism and with his finance background would qualify to be a director on AIR for instance. But there are others like Bill Birch ( formerly Dorchester) Shiply (Genesis) etc that we though have little to no merit. English (Bill) was mentioned as well but lets not go there.
I am sure SML is doing well, not to sure on Richardson's abilities, but if she is adding value then good on her.
my understanding is that Jenny dropped the ball when Yan borrowed the money and yet kept offering verbal financial support to Mainzeal without any paperwork to back it up.
Dont need to be a director to know that deals need to be backed up with signatures on pieces of paper. However, whether him being unable to extricate the money back from China is the directors fault or not is possibly arguable.
Bottom line is they got shafted by him because they didnt think it through. So incompetence/reckless ?? who can say but Insurers will have to pay anyway and I assume directors never had any skin in the Mainzeal game (not sure about that) so how much did they really care?