Arnott’s MD takes the biscuit

Related party transaction disclosure is pretty poor at ASX-listed companies, so when a question was thrown at the Australian-based managing director of Arnott’s, George Zoghbi, at yesterday’s Brambles AGM, you might expect the chairman to mumble something about the law not requiring disclosure — in this case on how much Arnott’s spends each year buying pallets from Brambles’ supply chain company CHEP.

Instead, chairman John Mullen, who is also the long-serving chairman of Telstra, immediately piped up to explain that Arnott’s buys its pallets from a rival supplier to Brambles.

Oh, dear. How embarrassing for the Arnott’s MD, who has been on the Brambles board since January 2016 and has been the Sydney-based CEO of Arnott’s since the beginning of 2020.

On the flipside, Mullen did offer up that the Brambles board tucks into Arnott’s Tim Tams at its meetings. Almost as if he was providing proof, when the 70-minute hybrid AGM was drawing to a close, Mullen was heard to say: “Long day. I’m looking forward to those Tim Tams.”

On more substantive matters, Mullen admitted that Brambles is a very big client of VicForests for its timber pallets, but stressed how it is certified as being a sustainable supplier.

Yes, but the Andrews Labor government is still hacking into old growth forests across Victoria. However, Brambles reckons that for every tree it is causing to be felled, it is promising to plant two.