Chris Corrigan Quotations

I did not know about, and certainly did not approve of, this arrangement,

I don't think any progress has been made on that front.

If (Toll chief Paul) Little isn't prepared to face us in the boardroom, we have no option but to meet him in court,

I suspect it might be a while getting a suitable candidate.

Patrick regards its prospect for growth in freight forwarding as greatly superior to Toll given that Toll is already the dominant supplier in this market with no significant prospects for future growth.

Our long-term capital investment program in ports will move to a new phase next month with the opening in Brisbane of our world-first automated straddle carrier terminal,

I worry about those people (Toll) being in charge of $10 billion (combined) company,

well into an investment cycle that should lead to long-term consistent growth from a stable of high quality strategic businesses.

We had a look at it and decided it wasn't something we wanted to be involved in.

We have been trying for months to get an investigation underway into this deal which was negotiated between Toll employees and former Toll employees who were being given Toll options while working at Pacific National,

Well, Richard always is a colourful sort of sideshow, isn't he.

Toll have effectively negotiated with themselves a transaction which is not in line with the board approval that was given,

Toll has negotiated for itself a 20-year contract which gives it exclusive rights to all of the freight carried by Pacific National in Queensland,

Toll can pay more, Richard Branson can pay more and the Virgin Blue in specie distribution can be monetised.

Unfortunately, Toll did not apply the same standards

We don't need to dilute, or as some people say pollute, by merging our business with a road freight-forwarding business,

Far from being a serious bid to build an Asian-Pacific colossus, the bid is a crude maneuver to stop Patrick competing with Toll in Australia. Patrick doesn't need Toll.

Everything we have learned about Toll in the last seven months has confirmed our belief that Toll has lower quality assets and a higher risk earnings profile.

The Toll bid was ill-conceived from the outset. It has been a failure of both strategy and execution.

The Toll bid is an act of desperation,

It would be more valuable to Patrick and Toll shareholders if (chief executive) Paul Little focused on an orderly break-up of Pacific National which is now deteriorating daily.

The support for cleaning this up, I have to tell you, is overwhelming. And it is about time we got on with the job of cleaning up the waterfront and making it a productive place for all Australians.

Originally Toll wanted to buy that through Pacific National,

Now it turns out that this is considerably more money than these ferries actually make,

Now he's being given the opportunity to buy back effective control (of Virgin) at 1.40 aud (a share), so it is an extraordinarily wonderful situation for him. I hope he hasn't danced on my grave prematurely.

There's a risk I suppose that Pacific National is broken up and that's a route that seems inevitable,

There's a risk I suppose that Pacific National is broken up, and that's a route that seems inevitable.

All Patrick employees who went to Pacific National when the joint venture was formed in 2002 were required to resign from Patrick and did not receive further options from Patrick,

It's very difficult for me to make a judgement on that - it's a day-to-day proposition really, isn't it?

The Board strongly believes that, based on this offer, Patrick shareholders are better off without Toll in the medium and long term. Patrick has far superior businesses and significantly greater growth prospects relative to Toll.

The bid is ill-conceived, poorly structured and offers Patrick shareholders a diluted interest in the high-quality businesses Toll wants.

I've got a very poor opinion as it turns out now, because we've been stitched up in the transaction in relation to Pacific National, which has really broken down the trust that I would have in a business partner,

These people are desperate to do any deal anyone puts on the table.

I imagine we'll start off with: Great opportunity to come into a dysfunctional organisation, work for two shareholders who are at each other's throats, expect to receive the occasional barrage of emails and the odd derogatory, blasphemous phone message,

I'm pleased that we have been able to achieve this result for Patrick shareholders who may now choose to share in the benefits of the merged Toll and Patrick businesses.

If you look at Toll as a business, it's a primarily a road-based, freight forwarding business,

Without deep personal transformation, collective transformation is not possible.

I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly.

I'd always had a childhood ambition to go into the investment capital business, and spent twenty-odd years in it. But the thought of spending the second half of my career in the same business was boring, so I looked around for other opportunities .

You would have to say of John Howard's government that he has tended to go after things with a fair degree of determination, and I would have thought.. I don't see any reason why that should suddenly disappear now that he has control of both houses.

You can't overestimate the need to plan and prepare. In most of the mistakes I've made, there has been this common theme of inadequate planning beforehand. You really can't over-prepare in business!

I think Virgin Blue is still a very promising and exciting business. Now, I know that's not a view that's widely held in the market but I think the market is simply throwing it into the too-hard basket at the present time because of the oil price events. But we think it is still a very exciting business.

I was always acting primarily with shareholder interests in mind. It's also true I've always had a fairly moralistic attitude to business, and would not do anything that I considered improper. As a consequence, I have occasionally pursued issues during my career that other people might have avoided.

I'm a firm believer that to really understand a business takes years, not months. As an investment analyst you think you understand a business from the outside, but the reality is that, once you are inside, you can go on learning for five or ten years.