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Friday, 27 July 2007 |
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Never trust a man who is named after a salad dressing.
I remember it well. A pal phoned up to say that rebel shareholders were threatening to challenge Vodafone over its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless. Nothing new; nothing special. But one name she mentioned was a blast from the past. “Who could be behind this?”, I asked.
Well, blow me down with the backdraft from a herd of sheep but it was John Mayo. Googling the man yields ambivalent results: “a healer born and bred in Gloucestershire, John Mayo ran a joinery company until he accidentally discovered his extraordinary ability to heal.” We are doubtless dealing with another John Mayo. Or maybe not.
Surely not the same John Mayo who allegedly screwed over Marconi in its death throes while acting as its finance director and now has re-surfaced as the head of rebel shareholder group ECS which has launched an assault on Vodafone’s board. Nope, can’t have been him.
This week’s Vodafone AGM saw a man known as ‘John Mayo’ lead the ECS shareholder group and garner less than 5% support for the Verizon stake sell-off. The AGM also rejected the notion that Vodafone laden itself with additional debt: that can only have been Mayo’s idea.
Jim Chalmers
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