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Brookfield’s Healthscope investment is, like many of its holdings, now held through those same jurisdictions, while issues of tax continue to plague the Canadian asset titan.
This month, Brookfield urged shareholders to vote down a shareholder meeting resolution proposed by two employee unions that would have forced it to issue an annual tax transparency report in line with the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative. The asset manager told shareholders the resolution had been proposed by a mere 0.001 per cent of the register.
At the AGM, however, 27 per cent of votes favoured the dissident proposal. So it failed. Still, it’s an extraordinary result for this kind of rabble-rousing, which usually garners hardly any support at all.
Funnily enough, Chalmers is considering legislation that would make the vote at least partly moot. A draft Treasury bill released earlier this year outlined how the government plans to mandate the public disclosure of country-by-country tax reporting of all businesses with Australian operations, as part of a tax transparency push that horrified corporates, equally aghast fund managers and thrilled tax-the-rich types all agree is world-leading.
Brookfield hasn’t publicly denounced the government proposal. Though it did just urge shareholders to vote against a similar tax transparency push at its AGM, citing fears of its own commercial disadvantage.
That alignment with Chalmers only goes so far.
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