An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

On Mon­day, Massy Hold­ings pres­i­dent and CEO, Ger­vase Warn­er, said the job of the group’s ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, An­gelique Parisot-Pot­ter, was not in jeop­ardy be­cause of the com­ment she made at the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al meet­ing.

Yes­ter­day, the board of the com­pa­ny ini­ti­at­ed a dis­ci­pli­nary process to re­view Parisot-Pot­ter’s con­duct at the meet­ing.

In a state­ment last night, pub­lished as an ad­ver­tise­ment in this news­pa­per, the Massy board said the dis­ci­pli­nary process would weigh Parisot-Pot­ter’s con­duct at the meet­ing “against her du­ties as the Gen­er­al Coun­sel to the Com­pa­ny and will fol­low due process to de­ter­mine how this should be han­dled re­spon­si­bly yet de­ci­sive­ly.”

In an ex­clu­sive sto­ry from in­side the Massy an­nu­al meet­ing, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Parisot-Pot­ter said “the com­pa­ny is spend­ing scarce for­eign ex­change on an ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment pro­gramme in Fort My­ers, Flori­da that in­volves ‘bizarre rit­u­als’ and ‘high­ly du­bi­ous ac­tiv­i­ties’.”  

The Massy board said, “The com­pa­ny cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nies us­ing the pro­gramme to train peo­ple to com­mu­ni­cate with the dead or heal with ‘white light’ as al­leged by Ms Parisot-Pot­ter. The state­ments are patent­ly un­true, scan­dalous and de­signed to so­lic­it fear.”

The Massy board said it was ap­palled at her con­duct.

The board said that on No­vem­ber 26, Parisot-Pot­ter sub­mit­ted a 13-page doc­u­ment of al­le­ga­tions and con­cerns to Warn­er, the Group CEO.

The com­pa­ny’s board said it “takes se­ri­ous­ly all al­le­ga­tions and has ini­ti­at­ed an in­de­pen­dent process to look in­to each of Mrs Parisot-Pot­ter’s al­le­ga­tions.”

But the board said it was con­cerned that Parisot-Pot­ter used the oc­ca­sion of the com­pa­ny’s 100th an­nu­al meet­ing to fol­low up on her sub­mis­sion with pub­lic dis­clo­sure of a mat­ter con­fi­den­tial to the com­pa­ny.  

“The board has ini­ti­at­ed a dis­ci­pli­nary process to re­view Ms Parisot-Pot­ter’s con­duct at the an­nu­al meet­ing against her du­ties as the gen­er­al coun­sel to the com­pa­ny and will fol­low due process to de­ter­mine how this should be han­dled re­spon­si­bly yet de­ci­sive­ly,” the state­ment said.  

 In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the an­nu­al meet­ing on Mon­day, Warn­er was asked whether Parisot-Pot­ter’s job was not in jeop­ardy.

“Not be­cause of what she said at the AGM (an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing),” he re­spond­ed.

Asked whether the 13-page let­ter she wrote in No­vem­ber meant that the Massy ex­ec­u­tive was not aligned with the rest of the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment team, Warn­er said, “That is an in­ter­pre­ta­tion that I can­not ex­pand up­on be­cause that would be for her to speak to.”

Ques­tioned on where Parisot-Pot­ter stands in the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment of Massy, the com­pa­ny’s CEO and pres­i­dent said, “What do you mean? She is the gen­er­al coun­sel.”

Asked if she re­mains the gen­er­al coun­sel, Warn­er said, “She re­mains the gen­er­al coun­sel, as we speak.”

In the in­ter­view on Mon­day, Warn­er de­fend­ed the use of Del­phi Sphere Con­sult­ing, a Fort My­ers-based ex­ec­u­tive train­ing firm.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion about the group’s use of for­eign ex­change, the Massy CEO de­scribed the ex­pen­di­ture of be­tween US$500,000 and US$1 mil­lion a year on Del­phi as a “drop in the buck­et,” of the group’s ex­pen­di­ture on train­ing and de­vel­op­ment for its 13,000 em­ploy­ees.

“Part of why we are able to raise for­eign ex­change in this coun­try is through the per­for­mance of our busi­ness­es. And there is a di­rect link­age to the per­for­mance of our busi­ness­es and the in­vest­ment in these train­ing pro­grammes,” said Warn­er. Es­pe­cial­ly the train­ing pro­gramme that formed the ba­sis of Parisot-Pot­ter’s com­plaint, he said.

“So I would ar­gue that it is ac­tu­al­ly a net gen­er­a­tor of for­eign ex­change be­cause we make this in­vest­ment and then we are able to get our ex­port-earn­ing busi­ness­es to per­form bet­ter, to earn us more for­eign ex­change,” Warn­er added.