Fonterra, Sharesies join to make share trading easier
Fonterra is teaming up with wealth app provider Sharesies to make it easier for its farmer shareholders to trade co-op shares among themselves.
OPINION: Fonterra's upcoming director elections will be an interesting contest with a potential shake-up on the cards, which its board surely needs.
Currently, the dairy co-op is copping robust criticism of its performance and future strategy.
Its performance has been under fire from all quarters including from Government ministers.
The farmer-owned cooperative has up to 11 directors. Seven must be shareholders with dairy farming interests, while four are independent and appointed by the board. Former chairman John Wilson and long-servicing director Nicola Shadbolt are not standing again, so two of the three seats up for contention this year are vacant.
Five candidates have put up their hands for the three vacancies: the incumbent director Ashley Waugh, Zespri chair Peter McBride and Ministry for Māori Development chief executive and Māori Television chairman Jamie Tuuta, who all came through Fonterra’s ‘independent’ nomination system.
Adding interest to this year’s vote are bids by former director Leonie Guiney – who was dumped from the board last when she failed to make it through this same nomination process – and multi property-owning Canterbury dairy farmer John Nicholls. Both have come to the contest via the ‘self-nominating’ process.
The two chose not to take part in Fonterra’s ‘independent nomination process’ in which candidates are nominated by the board after being recommended by an independent selection panel. Instead they relied on getting the signatures of 35 farmer shareholders to support their nominations.
Guiney has recently settled a legal wrangle with the Fonterra board after suing it for defamation, when it took court action earlier this year gagging her from speaking about co-op business.
All the candidates standing need to restore farmer and public confidence in Fonterra. A good start would be an end to the ridiculous board-controlled ‘independent’ nomination process. While few would dispute the quality of all the candidates who have come through this time, the perception of this process is that the board only allows the candidates it wants to run for election.
Meantime, the ‘self-nomination’ process has also produced two good candidates, showing that would-be directors of quality can be found without the need for Fonterra to have to artificially ‘manufacture’ them. Full and proper democracy should be the hallmark and standard of any farmer co-operative.
A vet is calling for all animals to be vaccinated against a new strain of leptospirosis (lepto) discovered on New Zealand dairy farms in recent years.
Two major red meat sector projects are getting up to a combined $1.7 million in funding from the New Zealand Meat Board (NZMB).
Angus Barr and Tara Dwyer of The Wandle, Lone Star Farms in Strath Taieri have been named the Regional Supreme Winners at the Otago Ballance Farm Environment Awards in Dunedin.
OPINION: The distress that the politicians and bureaucrats are causing to the people of Wairoa and the wider Tairāwhiti is unforgivable.
Dairy
Rural banker Rabobank is partnering with Food Rescue Kitchen on a new TV series which airs this weekend that aims to shine a light on the real and growing issues of food waste, food poverty and social isolation in New Zealand.