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By Shoeshine

Friday 20th December 2002

At the fifth annual Shoeshine Awards a glittering host of corporate underachievers collect their gongs

It's now almost a cliche but it can't be resisted. For the fourth year in a row, the Tukoroirangi Morgan Medal for Thin-skinned Sensitivity goes to BIL, formerly Brierley Investments, which this year held its annual meeting in sunny Hawaii. The only way most of its 80,000 New Zealand shareholders would have made it would have been to contract leprosy and get a stay at the colony next door to BIL's Molokai holiday ranch. BIL this year made $US10 million on net assets of $US750 million.

Somewhat predictably the McSkimmings S-Bend Award for shareholder wealth disposal was again a fiercely contested category. Runners-up were Baycorp Advantage (share price down 71% for the year) and Tower (down 64%). But the prize went to RMG, which, having chewed through enough CEOs and CFOs to fill Eden Park, ends the year down a truly impressive 84%.

Two strong contenders his year's Robin Hood Ribbon for Wealth Transfer. Fay Richwhite and Pacific Rail in May flogged the investing public shares in Tranz Rail at $3.60 in May price now $1.05 attracting the attention of the Securities Commission. The commission is also keenly interested in Bain Capital Partners and PEP, whose July bailout from Vertex at $2.05 price now $1.37 takes the award.

Lest Tranz Rail feel let down, the company walks away with this year's Annus Horribilis Pewter Mug. The usual litany of deaths, derailments and melting tracks this year came against bitter recriminations from its shareholders and Russell Crowe-style punchups with its major customers.

The Caterpillar Tractors Award for Heavy-duty Blame-shifting can go only to Tower chairman Colin Beyer, who redefined corporate governance by blaming departed CEO James Boonzaier for all the company's woes. Beyer may not know where the buck stops but shareholders voting on directors' re-election undoubtedly will.

A new honour, the Nero Gold Laurel for Executive Opulence, might seem more fitted to the 1990s than today's chastened corporate environment. But judges had no difficulty bestowing it on Guinness Peat Group's executive directors for their weighty swag bags and platinum parachutes.

Two years ago Fletcher Challenge scooped the inaugural Viagra Premature Ejaculation Award after failing to realise the Australian Stock Exchange doesn't recognise embargoes. The NZSE wasn't paying attention and takes this year's award for making exactly the same mistake with Tower.

The winner of this year's Light Brigade Trophy bestowed for charging ahead regardless of the consequences was never in doubt. JB Were, or "Just B Were" to investors, walks off with the accolade for stuffing its client accounts full of Tranz Rail and Vertex shares. It followed up this stupendous achievement by paying the Stock Exchange $50,000 "toward the cost of redrafting the NZSE rules and regulations" and committing "to following the NZSE's formal interpretation of regulation 6 ... from now on."

South Africa's Econet Wireless picks up the Betamax Trophy for the worst business plan. Despite persuading the government to change the law to ease its market entry, its ambitions to run under the juggernaut tyres of Telecom and Vodafone have been put back to the end of next year. The word is it's finding investors rarer than poor lawyers.

Carter Holt Harvey's would-be spinoff Straightedge was a shoo-in for the Bill Clinton Cigar for Industrial-strength Porky-telling. It picks up the odoriferous honour for insisting a horde of institutional investors was mustard-keen on its share issue two weeks before it canned it for lack of interest.

This year's Winston Peters Trophy for Political Expediency goes to the Securities Commission for the elegance of the legalistic obfuscation which allowed it to exonerate Prime Minister Helen Clark of tipping Air New Zealand shares. Ministers now know to keep their gobs shut when state investments are being discussed.

And last but by no means least, the Garbo Gong goes to Eric "I vant to be alone" Watson for sodding off to London to escape the cruel attentions of our media and ending up on the front page of the Sun.

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