GENERATION DEVELOPMENT GROUP LIMITED — AGM Information 2008

Oct 29, 2008

==> picture [276 x 118] intentionally omitted <==

CHAIRMAN’S AND MANAGING DIRECTOR’S ADDRESSES

Austock Group Limited AGM Thursday 30 October 2008

Slide 2 – Chairman’s address

Ladies & Gentlemen

I’m addressing you today in a market in which many believe is the worst possible and it seems that uninformed and speculative views on the market, and on Austock, abound. But I’m also addressing you today with optimism and an enduring belief in Austock.

There are many issues still ahead of us and whilst we are all properly disappointed with our share price there are many positive features. It is worth remembering Desiderada; “go placidly amid the noise and the haste”.

I have been impressed in the way our senior people, under our Chief Executive Tim Boyle have stepped forward in these difficult times. They have shown their commitment to our company with their willingness to put in. They have confirmed this commitment with their willingness to buy shares and increase their ownership in Austock.

Mindful of this, and confident in the leadership team, I have discussed with the Board my wish to step down from day-to-day executive responsibility of Austock. With agreement of the Board from 1 November I will no longer be Executive Chairman of Austock.

This is as it should be. I have referred previously to the generational change going on within Austock, and this is an important next step, and a proper step, in the progress of our company.

The Board has also agreed that it will seek to recruit two new members to its ranks. I will continue for the immediate future as non-executive Chairman to provide guidance and a sense of history to the company. Should the Board consider it appropriate that others should take up my role in the future, I will be comfortable with that.

I have been Chairman of Austock for nearly 14 years and have been dedicated to the company. I remain so.

I would now like to hand over to our Managing Director, Tim Boyle for an update on the business. Thank you Tim.

==> picture [276 x 118] intentionally omitted <==

Slide 3 – Managing Director’s address

Thank you Bill for all your help and support over the period and from all our staff, directors and shareholders for your 14 years of dedicated service as Executive Chairman of Austock Group. Thank you.

Austock is one of a handful of Australian, independent, publicly listed diversified investment and financial services groups. The Group provides a wide range of wealth management, capital markets and investment management services to individuals, corporates and institutions.

As Bill mentioned these are difficult and challenging times, which Austock will work diligently to capitalise on. We have undertaken an internal restructure to ensure our cost base is appropriate given the market conditions, whilst maintaining our revenue generating potential. We are positioned to avail ourselves of strategic opportunities that may arise.

We have cash, we are pro-actively managing our costs, we have good people and are a very compliant and heavily regulated group of businesses.

Reaffirming Austock’s strong position:

• Austock maintains a strong cash position. Austock recently reported to the ASX that our capital position is very strong and significantly exceeds the ASX requirements, so much so that our current capital base exceeds the $10 million capital requirements for our Securities business, planned for the end of 2009.

• Austock does not operate a proprietary trading business, a hedge fund, stock or margin lending activities.

• Austock Corporate Finance’s M&A team have successfully advised on the QGC’s $800 million takeover offer for Sunshine Gas and the recently announced $5.6 billion British Gas Group’s recommended takeover offer for QGC. This is in addition to assignments for Sims Group, Terramin and Northern Energy.

• Our Institutional grade research product is rated as a leader amongst our peers.

• Our Life business is swimming against the tide in its sector in achieving monthly gross inflows of up to $7 million.

• We have completed substantial restructures within the Asset Management and Property Management businesses.

• We have a strong management team, who is using this downturn as an opportunity to bolster our talent and revenue generating capacity, and

• Austock businesses are regulated by the ASX, APRA & ASIC and we maintain a robust compliance and reporting regime.

==> picture [276 x 118] intentionally omitted <==

Slide 4 – Content Page

We released our results and our Annual Report and Financial Statements on the 28 August.

It is my intention to go through the highlights of the financials, the summary balance sheet and cash flow and provide an update on our restructure and an outlook statement. We will provide ample time at the end for questions and the directors and senior management will stay back after the presentation should you wish to pose any direct questions.

Slide 5 – Financial overview

Firstly the financial statements of Austock are now very complicated, with our annual report exceeding 100 pages of financials and disclosures. In the next three slides, I will summarise the financial statements and identify the key numbers and issues.

We are now required by accounting standards to aggregate Life Benefit Funds into our accounts. All financials on the following slides will however exclude the impact of these because Austock shareholders do not derive any benefit (or detriment) due to the financial result of the Benefit Funds. As a result, the aggregation of these financials results tends to distort the true operational performance of the Group.

The 2008 accounts included a number of one-off items that we have distinguished from the underlying operational performance of the business. At the time of our results announcement, we provided significant detail regarding the nature of these items, namely, losses arising from our now discontinued operations in the US and impairment charges relating to our investments in APX and a number of other legacy investments.

After excluding these one-off items, Austock generated an underlying profit before tax of $9.8m which was down 12% from the prior period. The Group feels that this is a solid result considering the difficult market conditions that were present in the second half.

Revenue was up significantly by 22% and was mainly driven by strong Corporate Finance performance and the continued growth in our annuity income streams.

Slide 6 – Balance sheet

Austock continues to maintain a healthy cash balance, with relatively low levels of debt. The intangibles are associated to our Property business.

Overall, Austock’s balance sheet remains very strong which places us in a good position to cope with the current volatility of financial markets.

==> picture [276 x 118] intentionally omitted <==

Slide 7 – Cashflow statement

Whilst cash levels were broadly unchanged between the start and end of the financial year ($29.2m v $28.3m), the two halves of the year had a very different profile. First half cash was boosted by a strong underlying financial performance and the proceeds from our IPO whereas in the second half, cash levels deteriorated due to operational performance being well down and some significant debtors being recorded in late June.

Unlike many of our competitors, we are not in a net debt position but rather have a strong net cash position and despite the expectation of continued difficult trading conditions, we would expect strong cash reserves to be maintained throughout this financial year.

Slide 8 – Segment review Corporate and Securities

Corporate Finance

Current market conditions have significantly impacted Corporate Finance. The broader equity capital markets downturn has also resulted in substantially reduced activity and future volatility will keep corporate issuers reluctant to tap equity markets and investors wary.

However, we have recently completed capital raisings for Northern Energy and Terramin which in these markets is a credit to the teams on our dealing desks and in Corporate Finance.

And on the mergers and acquisitions front the team has also successfully advised QGC’s $800 million bid for Sunshine Gas and the recently announced $5.6 billion British Gas Group’s recommended takeover offer for QGC. We have also completed various other assignments.

Research

The research division has undergone a review of their marketing positioning, resulting in the continued strengthening of our research capabilities.

Our team of dedicated industry specialists now cover 130 stocks across our core competencies of resources, infrastructure, emerging companies, agribusiness, energy and financial services. Concentrating on our core competencies has enhanced our dealing and research teams.

Our team was rated #1, of our 19 peers, for both stock recommendations and accuracy of earnings predictions in 2008 according to the internationally recognised Starmine analyst ratings. BRW broker survey 2008 rated both Austock as a whole and our Research Team #1 of the non global investment banks.

Institutional Sales

The domestic institutional sales desk has also been directly affected by market conditions, in particular by lower trading volumes.

==> picture [276 x 118] intentionally omitted <==

Institutional Sales has developed a greater focus on client prioritisation and key account management, as well as, the development of desk based research notes covering an additional 100 companies.

It is worthwhile to note that Austock generates 75% of our brokerage from our Institutional desk.

Private Wealth

Private Wealth has been restructured into four key businesses: Private Clients, Adviser Broking Services, Private Portfolio Management and a new comprehensive Financial Planning business.

Our new financial planning capability complements the existing private wealth businesses and completes our private wealth advisory offering. It is a key component in Austock’s private wealth strategy to offer a more complete and value-add service to our clients.

Slide 9 – Segment review Investment Management

Property

Whilst FUM grew over the period, the changing property environment has seen us undertake a restructure of the business which has so far resulted in appointing new senior management and closing our Chicago office. The business is now trading profitably.

Asset Management

FUM decreased by 17% over the year resulting largely from market movements and some net outflows. Since June 30 we have also undertaken a substantial restructure of Asset Management, resulting in an enhanced process and a more cost efficient structure.

The Australian equity process will be enhanced to include a robust quantitative screening and the Managing Director of that business will assume responsibility for all equity mandates.

The restructure will go some way to repositioning the strengths of this business to focus on achievable FUM growth in the short to medium term.

For example we continue to produce new products with the launch of the Private Portfolio Service and the new sales team will commence marketing this product.

Life

Austock Life’s strategy continues to reap benefits with FUM reaching $108 million up 73% and the addition of six new options to the investment menu in the previous year.

==> picture [276 x 118] intentionally omitted <==

Most pleasing was over $55 million of new contributions into the Imputation Bond. These strong inflows have continued into this financial year. This is an excellent result considering current market conditions and that this was achieved with limited sales resources.

Slide 10 – Restructure update

Austock began a restructuring program in January this year to better deal with the current global environment. When we lodged our results in August we stated that we were looking for $5m in annualised cost savings. To date we have implemented around $7m in cost savings. Given the market this was the right decision and today we are still looking for commercial cost savings.

The Group’s headcount has decreased by more than 20% since its peak at the end of Calender 2007. We’ve done extensive analysis and cutting of group overhead costs and continue to look at ways to do things more efficiently.

Slide 11 – Trading update and outlook

Global markets are continuing to deteriorate resulting in the continued decline in trading volumes and ECM transactions. Corporate Finance continues to focus on M&A transactions, with the recently announced BG Group recommended takeover offer for QGC and QGC takeover offer for Sunshine Gas now unconditional and other transactions at various stages of maturity.

The Securities business continues to be adversely affected by lower volumes on the ASX but is somewhat being offset by corporate activity.

The Corporate Finance pipeline still has some quality transactions, but in this environment it is difficult to predict which, if any, will come to fruition.

The restructure of Property is now complete, with new management in place, financial performance stabilised and the business is now expected to generate positive returns in the short term.

The restructure of Asset Management is also complete, resulting in an enhanced process and considerable cost savings.

The future of Austock Life continues to look bright, highlighting the quality of the product offering and the tax efficient imputation bond platform.

Group overhead costs continue to be reviewed and cut where possible. We continue to review non-core investments. We have sold our stake in APX and are examining exit strategies for Austock Agribusiness.

==> picture [276 x 118] intentionally omitted <==

Austock’s strategy remains to develop a portfolio of financial services businesses whilst continuing to invest in our current businesses to create value via a platform of robust, diversified revenue streams.

Austock remains well capitalised and comfortably compliant with all of our regulatory requirements.

Taking into account the current environment, which we believe will not show signs of improvement until 2009, Austock will look to achieve greater scale and preserve our strong cash position.

Slide 12 – Summary

It worth going over some of the key facts.

The trading environment will continue to be difficult for some time, which will increase the number of M&A opportunities for the group.

Austock has a strong balance sheet and cash position.

We have a very committed and talented management team.

There will be a survivor bias at the end of this cycle and we are positioned to profit from the ensuing consolidation of the industry.

Thank you. I would now like to hand back to Bill for questions and to go through the matters for consideration.

Slide 13 – Questions

Thank you Tim. Are there any questions?

Slide 14 – Matters for consideration