RE:RE:RE:Bob Oliver - 5th Director proposed by Meir2 - First, I misread his Cloutier's time on Paladin's board, so I was wrong on that. I still think that experience is in the pro column, as he would have been put on the board after having a good relationship with the board or Goodman, but you're right that being on the board less than a year doesn't prove he can work with the company. I don't think anything Cloutier did shows he would be harmful to the company.
His time at Critical wasn't great, but little pharmaceutical companies fail all the time, and who is to say that he didn't resign because he saw the company wasn't viable or he was misled about its products, etc. Maybe the company was so irreparably damaged in the GFC it couldn't be turned around. I don't know. I get that the stock price is readily available and one of the only things we can judge on, but again, we're invested in Knight because markets are irrational/inefficient sometimes, so I don't take the stock price as the end all be all. This doesn't look great I'll admit, so I understand why you look at it negatively.
When he was GM at PTC, he was there for one year at a small subsidiary, for sure the stock price doesn't reflect his contributions. Maybe his time wasn't great, given the short tenure, but it's impossible to tell from the market performance.
Being chairman of Merus is probably the most relevant of the jobs you bring up, but in 3 years, maybe the stock price didn't reflect the fundamentals? 3 years is a short time. I am not going to argue Merus was a great company, as it was never profitable (which Cloutier deserves some blame obviously), but it was a fast growing company and Norgine was happy to acquire it at the price and said it had a strong product portfolio. I wouldn't necessarily call that a failure - it's definitely not a success, but we don't know enough to call it a failure.
To me his time at AstraZeneca is the most telling. He held an executive job in a large company and was there for a lot of building of the business. I don't like taking the Meir bio as gospel, but growing a new subsidiary from $800,000 in sales to $1 billion as CEO is impressive. Even that sales performance isn't enough for us to judge though, because maybe AstraZeneca was overinvesting in Canada while he was there?
3 - You're right that the stock price while they are board members is the easiest public info you can grab to judge performance, but I don't think jut because it's there we should use it. Make note of it, as you did, but don't base any judgements on it. Stock performance as execs or chairmen of boards, I would argue it is useful to look at the stock price, but even then I think you should look at revenue and net income instead. That takes more time so I understand why you didn't look at that for your posts. But just for time as a director, I would say it isn't really worth looking at. You can make note of it to see what kind of companies they associate themselves with, but if the stock price went down it's a leap to say they destroyed value (how much say do they have?).
4 - I know Goodman's education. I didn't mean to imply Cameron would be the only lawyer.
5 - Fair enough. I am not very experienced with Glass Lewis. The point remains though that Cameron as its founder would have a good handle on corporate governance, which is a good thing even if you don't have a problem with Knight's oversight. I'm willing to concede this as a neutral point but I still think it isn't fair to say he has no experience that can help the company.
6 - In general, yes you can conclude that these nominees are the challengers so they have to be heads and shoulders better than incombents to supplant them. I'm okay with that view. I would still say that getting good, experienced people on the board with new experiences can't hurt. The board has 7 directors now, I do't think it would hurt to have 9 if the right candidates came along (not saying these people are, just that we shouldn't necessarily think the new nominees have to take somebody's spot).
7 - This point I probably agree with, but again I'll say we can't say for certain. It's likely that these nominees have discussed plans with Meir and agree with them. But it's not definite. My guess is that when Meir started this battle, the nominees approached him for the opportunity to get on the board. They otherwise wouldn't have ever had the chance to be voted on, so they took the opportunity they could get. My biggest fear is that these otherwise good looking nominees (my opinion, I know you disagree) will just serve Meir's bidding, and therefore won't be the objective/impartial board members we need. My preference would be to hear from them before the AGM and voting, as their positions about Knight's long term plan is more important than their resumes.