What’s the scam with the Qantas board letting CEO Alan Joyce dump $17m worth of his own Qantas shares into the share buy-back?
The scam is buy-backs. They simply prop up the share price using shareholders’ own money, not to mention, in the case of Qantas, the public’s bail-out money. And this buy-back is already in the red so Qantas shareholders have helped Alan get out for a higher price. Meantime, the fleet has been run down during the Joyce regime, customer service too, and now Alan’s successor faces a massive capex bill to fix things.
If they had nationalised Qantas when the Pandemic hit, the government would be floating it again for $12bn now.
Literally all of the $545m that Qantas have deployed on their second and ongoing $QAN share buyback is now in the red. How spending bailout money ahead of overdue capital expenditure, rising interest rates and a recession was approved by the company's board is perplexing.
— Anthony Pesec (@anthonypesec) June 9, 2023
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.