I'm buying VOC because, page-126

Not sure if anyone posted this article from a few weeks back... apologies if it's a double up ; )

John Ho, founder of 18 per cent shareholder Janchor, joined the Vocus board in January.
Since then it has announced a downgrade, shifted its chief executive and chair, and yesterday appointed Bob Mansfield as chair. At the outset it should be noted the changes are on paper and all for the good, because Vocus now is a company with great assets lacking on execution.
But the links should also be noted, and Ho’s entry to the board and subsequent changes were not mere coincidences.
Mansfield has had an extraordinary corporate career dating back to his days at McDonald’s in the 1980s, effectively founding chief of Optus in the early 1990s, a time running Fairfax, advising then Prime Minister John Howard on industry policy, Telstra chair and deputy chair of failed bull market darling Allco Finance.
Along the way he has been at the centre of some major corporate snafus and stoushes, and above all he is a great people person and knows the telecommunications industry back to front.
In short, he is an ideal person to be the next Vocus chair and to be in place before the company selects the next chief executive.
Mansfield joined the board last year at former chair Vaughan Bowen’s urgings, the two having met when Mansfield agreed to chair the advisory board of Bowen’s Telco Together Foundation, a charitable concern.
The 40-year-old Ho is becoming a major player in corporate Australia as chair of now revived Tasmanian dairy marketer Bellamy’s, a major shareholder in Medibank and past investor in Aurizon, the failed SurfStitch, and Brambles spin-off Recall, which was sold to Iron Mountain two years ago.
His fund started in 2010 and is now worth a reported $20 billion, including early shareholdings in Chinese internet giant Alibaba.
Educated in Sydney, he is bright and, while on some definitions an activist shareholder, just happens to have the right corporate philosophy. He was quoted once attacking Australian corporate boards for being “focused more on compliance and governance than real strategic value creation”.
“They should develop a real strategic insight and support management in long-term value creation,” he added.
These are views few in corporate Australia would argue with. But not everyone puts them into practice quite as well as the Hong Kong-based Ho, who is also deputy chair of the listing committee on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
His track record, apart from a couple of losers like SurfStitch, has included some major winners like Bellamy’s, which bottomed at $3.71 in March last year to close yesterday on a new 52-week high of $19.08 a share.
Vocus traded at $9.41 two years ago with a market value of $5.8bn and yesterday closed up 15c at $2.41 with a value of $1.5bn.
There is some value to be made up at a company that in some respects is a classic roll up, the consequence of some 70 different takeovers, which now have a combined national infrastructure network and about 7 per cent market share on the NBN.
With Telstra sitting on 50 per cent share, the big white hope is that along with TPG, Vocus and Vodafone will become a major force to counter the behemoths Telstra and Optus. Last week Vocus waved goodbye to long-time chief Geoff Horth and yesterday it was his mate Bowen who walked to clear the air, allowing the new team to take over.
Eighteen months ago the old Vocus team, founder James Spenceley and Amcom’s Tony Grist, walked after a boardroom coup failed. Former chair David Spence left some time later.
The combination of the old Telstra reseller in M2, infrastructure-based Vocus and, later, NextGen proved difficult to integrate and, after a series of deals where he was the dominant player, Horth struggled with a merger of equals where different cultures and top-heavy structures proved a challenge.
The bottom line is the assets are fine — it’s a matter of better execution.