TELSTRA boss Sol Trujillo and his board have taken a public relations hammering over their significant pay packets, on news that the telco's eight-person executive team will earn $46.3 million this year.
Of that, Trujillo takes $13.38 million, while his American chief operations officer, Greg Winn, grossed $11.2 million.
Some papers have even been trotting out headlines about the boss and his "three amigos", despite some polite protestations from Telstra last year pointing out that US-born Trujillo, who has Mexican ancestry, regards the reference as offensive.
Quite a few who have begrudged Sol and his team their hefty pay packets have been fairly quiet in the past day, despite news that Rupert Murdoch earned $US30.1 million last financial year as boss of News Corp. That's an annual increase of 24%, most of which came from a $US17.5 million bonus.
Christmas last year was also fairly flush in the Murdoch household, thanks to proceeds from an open market share sale. The Murdoch clan sold 17,562,189 News Corp shares on November 15, netting a handy $US354,756,217, which must have helped to keep the wolves from the door.
Full Disclosure notes that the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun ran an online poll asking "are Telstra executives paid too much?" following the announcement of Trujillo's pay package.
We won't hold our breath waiting for a similar one about the News Corp chairman.
Feel free to hassle
REPORTING season means paperwork, and among the mail being sent to shareholders are a series of unsolicited offers from a company called Hassle Free Share Sales, which has sounded on Full Disclosure's radar before.
The latest targets of Hassle Free Share Sales, which offers about half the market value for parcels of shares, include Commonwealth Bank, Woodside and Wesfarmers.
Amcor, National Australia Bank, Woolworths and BHP Billiton have all put their shareholders on alert since Hassle Free's owner, 42-year-old Suzanne Lee Forster, requested access to the share registries of those companies.
Under Australian law, companies must hand over
the names and addresses of shareholders to Forster's company, as long as it pays
the appropriate fee.
Those who trawl share registries are often on the look-out for smaller holdings, and often target the elderly who may have little idea what their shares are worth or how they can sell them to get maximum value.
If you have a problem with the tactics of Forster, who seems to have taken a leaf out of the book of renowned share "bottom feeder" David Tweed, we suggest that you write to her yourself.
According to publicly available Australian Securities and Investments Commission documents, her address is unit 9, 4 Park St, St Kilda West 3182.
Say "hi" from Full Disclosure - but DO NOT reveal your shareholder reference number.
The good news is, one of Forster's recent forays has been unsuccessful.
ASIC has made an order preventing the transfer of IAG shares to Ms Forster's Hassle Free concern.
Emission possible
THERE were a few wry smiles at Mercedes-Benz HQ in Melbourne after former premier Steve Bracks delivered his paper on the future of the motor industry.
The centrepiece of that - a plan to tax cars by their CO2 emissions, rather than their sticker price - looks remarkably similar to the plan hatched by Mercedes staff to combat the planned luxury car tax introduced by the Rudd Government in the budget. Continued…
