Tourism Tasmania must be filthy with the Bellamy's board. The epic struggle for control of the organic food group has brought fresh relevance to every tired pejorative yet coined for the Apple Isle's quietly demented inhabitants.
Remember that on multiple occasions rebel shareholder Jan Cameron categorically denied any connection to the company's largest shareholder, the mysterious Black Prince Foundation. Then she admitted that in fact Black Prince has just one asset – 14.48 per cent of Bellamy's – and is answerable entirely to another trust, named after Cameron's mother Elsie, and of which Cameron and her lawyer are directors and shareholders.
Further, Black Prince directs any correspondence not to its immaculately tailored private banker in the Dutch corner of the Caribbean, but to the webmail address for Cameron's White Dog Café in the charming coastal town of Bicheno. Would you like a soy piccolo with that tax credit?!
What is it with Cameron and pooches? In addition to her canine coffee shop on the picturesque Tasman Highway, there's her failed homeware chain, the Dog's Breakfast Trading Company, which was folded into Chickenfeed bargain stores before collapsing with her Retail Adventures empire.
An adventure or otherwise, Bellamy's is certainly beginning to resemble a dog's breakfast, and may yet be worth chickenfeed. And who'd be surprised if Black Prince isn't the name of Cameron's favourite Alsatian?
Meanwhile, Bell Potter's Hugh Robertson continues to advise Cameron, despite, remarkably, selling Bellamy's stock for chairman Rob Woolley as recently as August.
One of the Cameron camp's nominees for the Bellamy's board, Vaughan Webber, is Robertson's colleague on the broking desk at Bells – despite this presumably innocent coincidence being entirely absent from the Webber resume camp Cameron has tendered in the Notice of Meeting now before Bellamy's shareholders. Bell Potter issued (very positive) research on Bellamy's, with no conflict disclosures, as recently as January 12. Why isn't the stock on the firm's restricted list?
