AMP set up for future says departing chair, Hazelton
AMP Limited is continuing its efforts to keep shareholders happy announcing the start of its $350 million third tranche to its capital return strategy.
The start of the third tranche was announced by AMP’s outgoing chair, Debra Hazelton who used her annual general meeting letter to shareholders to announce a FY23 final dividend of two cents per share, franked 20%.
“This commences the $350 million tranche 3 of the capital return, with the remainder to be completed via further dividends, and/or an on-market share-buyback,” her letter said.
It noted that AMP had committed to returning $1.1 billion to shareholders and that, to date, it had returned $750 million via an on-market buyback and dividends.
Hazelton will stand down from the chair and hand over to her successor, Mike Hirst, in next month and used her letter to claim that “during my tenure as Chair, AMP has undergone a significant transformation to set the company up for a sustainable future”.
“We have a strong CEO and management team in place; the business and strategy is repositioned; the AMP portfolio is simplified; the capital base is strong; and substantive legacy issues are resolved,” she said.
Hazelton referred to the company having resolved “significant legacy legal matters” and simplified the portfolio of businesses it owns.
All it took to get a sustainable future for AMP was to ensure that its advisers didn’t have a sustainable future. What’s a couple of suicides and breaking the law compared to fixing up the financials for an ASX listed company.
The irony is the equity owned practices hate them. Their attempted appeal against the BOLR decision was the last straw.
I spoke to a CEO of one practice recently who said the worst decision he ever made letting AMP on the board.