Good question @laoshi

I imagine someone like Mr Beazley can help you open a few doors, and that could legitimately help accelerate things for a company. At the same time, it does irk me that so many former ex-politicians are able to cash in on their connections. Christopher Pyne -- a former defense minister -- is on the board of munitions company NIOA, Gladys Berejiklian is on the Optus board, Mark Gowan is at Mineral Resources.. and that's just off the top of my head. I remember reading somewhere that former politicians oocupy something like 1 in 5 board positions for Federal Govt. Board positions.

Sadly, that's the world we live in.

A 5 year time frame is quite generous for these options, in my opinion, especially with the strike price set at the current market price. It'd be one thing if they were "European" expiry -- that is, could only be executed on the expiry date (in this case, 18/01/2029). That way, you'd at least have some confidence that long term value had been created if they ended up being in the money (even if the director wasn't directly responsible for that value creation). But as it is, they can be exercised at any time, so Beazley could, in theory, cash out on any near term pump in the price.

These options are on top of his board fees. I couldn't find what they are, but in aggregate the company can pay $450k in aggregate to non-executive directors:

So with 5 non-exec directors he could be on as much as $90k. Not bad work for attending a few meetings :)

Still, i shouldn't be too cynical. Like I said, he *may* end up providing a lot of value to the company, in which case this money is well spent. I'd just prefer a remuneration that was better tied to long term shareholder outcomes.

Anyway, I just emailed the MD to see if he'd be keen to meet with our members.