Connectedness

Connections Edit
I am not necessarily against trustees who for one reason or another may know existing staff, elected Directors or co-opted Directors. By their seniority one probably gains very competent people however they are also not typical of the general public and may view things differently from perhaps people from other professions or callings.

However, we also have the situation where the existing Trustees define the sought for proficiencies that they say are required for new Trustees, and then select who can be candidates. This does seem beyond what is reasonable in a subscription membership organisation.

For Which? Ltd and the Consumers' Assocaition Ltd the Directors and Trustees effectively are the controllers of the charity and whereas the Trustees once were a Management committee it seems that the power has gone to the Which? Ltd Board and indeed in 20013/14 the Consumers Association Trustees met only four times. Given the links between the two I will consider them together. It should be noted that the Chairman of the Consumers Association and the CEO are normally the only ones who attend meetings of both Board and Council and therfore have greater input.

Connections -

1. Mike Clasper, the Chairman of Which? Ltd  [and of the Guiness Peat Group] previously worked for a long time for Proctor & Gamble where Which? CEO Peter Vicary-Smith also started his career. According to an Independent article July 2015 Mike Clasper recruited Peter Vicary-Smith to Procter & Gamble.

Mike Clasper also worked as head of BAA, and of HMRC, and as co-opted Directors/Trustees we have Tony Ward formerly at BAA, and Melanie Dawes at HMRC. Prior to that Gabs Malouf also from the HMRC was co-opted 2007 - 2010 to both the Which Ltd Board and to the Consumers' Association.

2. Both Mark Addison and Anna Walker worked as Director Generals at Defra in 2001 -2004 and one would therefore think that they would know of each other as there are only a handful of Director Generals. According to Professor Barwise the advent of Anna Walker was via head-hunters and no one on the Board knew her.

3. Then there is the soap connection where several members have worked for Unilever in very senior positions. Paul Preston, and immediately before him Neil Cameron. Another member who has at one time or another worked for Unilever is Andrew Mullins 1986-95. Whilst one might feel happy that that P & G and Unilever might balance each other out the fact remains that they are only one sector of all of British industry.

Also rather sadly the EU fined both companies quite heavily for colluding on pricing and market share against consumers for the period 2002-2005, discovered in 2008 and judged in 2011. Not really a great recommendation for these consumer companies. In no way am I suggesting any of our Directors/Trustees were in the slightest way involved.

There is also the connection of our Chairman Professor Barwise to the fast moving consumer  goods industry as his online CV states he is an expert witness appearing in many cities mainly for consumer product companies. The only recorded mention I can find is from 1995 where in an EU merger case he was probably representing P & G or possibly SCA/PWA.

Also from Professor Barwise's CV it shows he became a "Founding investor and advisory Board member, Verve [ online brand communities] in 5. 09" This was later picked up by the auditors as at the time a restriction on the Consumers' Association doing business with companies where a Trustees had more than 1% of the shares.

Verve  provides the "engine" to do the surveys for Which? using the  Which? Connect band of subcribers and were being paid slightly over £0.5m a year. The Accounts, due to the change in Articles in 2012, no longer show how much Verve earns from Which?.

Disclosure in the Accounts would still be required if the Resolution had been defeated. The Chairman sold his shares in  Verve Patrner Holdings at cost in February 2012 but he repurchased them immediately following the November 2012 AGM when the limit for disclosure was lifted to 5%.

Personally I felt this was "not cricket". I think any shareholdings or relationships that Trustees or employees have in a supplier should be revealed when significant money is involved.

'''As a charity the Consumer Association I think needs to be whiter than white and despite heavy representation from P & G and Unilever I think it failed. It currently fails because of too many links between Trustees, fails because of a restricted range of people being involved, fails by the management of the election process, and fails because the Trustees ignore the intent of the Articles.'''

Manifestly proven because today 30 September 2015 a Council of fifteen is actually a Council of twelve with three of the Council's chosen co-opteds being "appointed" as elected to fulfil the requirment that there be nine elected members.

most of the information is here: as the last is not easy to find and lengthy here is the paragraph

EU 1995

(171) Professor Barwise in his paper prepared for a major competitor reaches four main quite different conclusions:

- 'First, brands are important in UK tissue markets: innovation and pricing are led by brands with private-label products playing a secondary role. The leading brands attract strong brand loyalty and command a high price premium.

- Second, there are only two  important UK tissue brands, Kleenex and Andrex. These two brands compete directly. Other UK brands are poorly advertised and exhibit weak brand loyalty.

- Third, given the strength of Andrex and Kleenex, a  successful new entry from a rival brand would be difficult, expensive and a particularly risky investment.

- Fourth, any company that  controlled both Andrex and Kleenex would have considerable scope to raise prices and to engage in strategic conduct designed to exclude rival brands and potential new private-label suppliers.` (Barwise, p. 2)