GrainCorp's John Wylie once 'formidable pair' with Murray Goulburn's Gary Helou

It took 31 months for the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission to extract an admission of wrongdoing from Murray Goulburn's rambunctious former chief executive Gary Helou.
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Better late than never – the latter being about when the Australian Securities and Investments Commission would’ve dragged him into the dock.
As recently as February last year, Gary the Great swore before an inquiry of the Australian Senate that, «we didn’t mislead, I didn’t mislead; there were extraordinary external regulation event [sic] in China in early April 2016 that … effectively removed our two best-selling lines … that were basically driving our profitability».
But Murray Goulburn told the market on April 12, 2016, that «we do not believe there will be any material impact to our business» and again on April 18 insisted, «this interruption does not have a material impact on MG’s business». Helou resigned on April 27. Crippled by debt and the toxic farmer-owner structure it fed, Murray Goulburn had to be rescued (read: eaten) by Canada’s Saputo only two years after its hybrid listing on the public market.
Gary the Great now admits «being knowingly concerned in Murray Goulburn’s false or misleading claims about the farmgate milk price it expected to pay dairy farmers during the 2015-16 milk season».
Gallingly, he is being pinged $200,000 under Australian Consumer Law rather than pursued for breaches of the Corporations Act, such as «disseminating information knowing it to be false» and «being intentionally dishonest and failing to discharge his duties as a director in good faith», whose penalties extend to custodial sentences (just ask Rodney Adler) and both of which Helou has just tacitly owned up to. Comically, the Federal Court has extracted an undertaking from Helou that he won’t work in the dairy industry for three years. So many prize gigs he’ll now have to turn down; the executive search firms must be inconsolable.

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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