Unexpected (or expected?) CSIC resignation of the Chair

Industry News



John Ryan's resignation enabled Alfred Wong to run for re-election, for his third term. Both Nigel and Alfred served two terms already and if they were not the Chair and Vice Chair, they could not run again.
Do you remember 2007 when Nigel was running? He distributed his platform (attached). On another forum, he stated that he will not run for a second term because he believes that the Directors should serve only one term and then step down to allow new Directors to take over. Nigel resigned in 2008 and his letter to John Ryan sent shortly after the resignation was the last indication that he is still the independent thinker we thought he would be... in 2009, he was appointed to the same position he resigned from a year ago... and from then on, he has been a faithful follower of John Ryan. If he kept his promise and did not accept any money for his services on the Board, then the amount listed for Directors' fees is much higher than those $ 55,000 on average that we calculated by dividing the amount by 9. However, Mr. Thomson never bothered to inform members whether he kept his election promise.
Alfred Wong - there is not much to be said about him. He was re-elected in 2007 after he asked members to trust him and leave him alone to do his job. He has been the Chair of the Audit Committee for the past year and we all know what the financial statements look like - no real information, other than the CMI has cost us over a million in the last fiscal year. A million that CSIC invested in the CMI Inc. and then wrote off as a loss. At the AGM when a member asked why is the CMI Inc. not shut down when it is losing money, Mr. Ryan's response was: why would we do that? Fiscal responsibility and corporate governance at its best!

Alfred was also the only Director ever re-elected (unless we count Holly Gracey who was appointed in 2005 and elected in 2006. In 2008, Imran Qayyum was defeated by Alli Amlani and Mr. Ryan secured his position on the Board by being acclaimed. In 2009, Dawn Moore was defeated. Both defeats showed clearly that members do not trust the Directors and would like to see a change. If the members are consistent, they cannot re-elect Nigel Thomson and Alfred Wong.