Incomprehensible, inept and just wrong
TERRY MCCRANN
HERALD SUN
FEBRUARY 12, 2014 12:00AM
WHAT Peter Mason, the soon-to-be ex-chairman of David Jones, did was utterly incomprehensible. It was also very badly wrong.
What the ‘invisible man,’ Greg Medcraft, still the chairman of ASIC, did NOT do, was merely embarrassingly inept. It was also plain wrong.
Late last year Mason, who’s been a respected and highly successful investment banker for over 40 years and an effective non-executive company director more recently, signed off as the company’s chairman, on two DJ directors buying shares in the company.
That in itself would be unremarkable; and we normally would never even hear about it. Except, that three days after the two directors, Steve Vamos and Leigh Clapham, went ahead and bought their shares, DJ released its first quarter sales numbers.
Sales bettered market expectations and the DJ share price leapt 6.6 per cent. If the...