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Woolworths Cops an Earful of Pokies at Their Annual General Meeting

The Woolworths board and senior management copped an earful at their AGM on 26th November and today they are surveying arguably the biggest single hit to the company’s once great brand.

Never before have chairman James Strong and CEO Michael Luscombe been forced to engage in such detail about their iniquitous 12,000-strong pokies operation.

The 6pm channel Seven news ran it third from the top wrapping in the comments from Tim Costello and Nick Xenophon out of Canberra with the shareholder action and finishing with one shareholder declaring they were going to sell out. (Mayne report)

The company was clearly deluged with questions from shareholders after all 400,000 were sent the anti-pokies S249P statement put together by Senator Nick Xenophon and Paul Bendat from www.pokieact.org.

The sad reality is that Woolies does the bare minimum prescribed by the various state parliaments and refused to get ahead of the curve, like its rival Wesfarmers which has agreed to spend millions upgrading its venues and is now in negotiations with Tabcorp to exit the industry.

Given that the ALP also found pokies so odious it decided to sell its Canberra Labor Clubs earlier this year, Woolies is drawing attention to itself by getting ever deeper into the industry with what is now a staggering 12,000-plus machines across the country.

read more at http://www.maynereport.com/articles/2009/11/26-1305-6351.html