Probably a "just". Sorry.
Where there will be, in effect, another monopoly in place. There is another thread on this topic - privatising a monopoly into a private monopoly doesn't work for the consumer. They should never have sold the infrastructural aspects covered by Telstra. But then, governments do prefer to boost the perceived value of the sale (eg. rather than sell Qantas and Australian separately they merged them first - into a defacto monopoly).
Or are they thinking - what the f&^%^ hell is going on here?!! Is it a private company or not? They have a fiduciary duty of care to ALL shareholders - not just the largest shareholder. Stripping reserves for dividend payments sounds more like a request by the majority shareholder to improve the perceived value of the company so it can offload it's stock. Any new CEO should buck at this crap.
And they'd be legally liable if their actions were not justifiably in the interests of the company's operation or was in anyway related to deceiving ANY of the shareholders. They'd probably have trouble with the regulatory authorities as well which would carry a criminal liability.
They'd make a fortune to just "run the show". Why would they want to risk their huge retirement funds?
RJ.
