You’d think that a board member of Perpetual Trustees and the company itself would fully understand the ins and outs of proper corporate governance, which makes the appointment of board member Bob Savage as chairman of the Sydney based investment group to replace the departing Charles Curran a bit rude.

That will be Bob Savage’s third chairmanship: his two others are with retailer David Jones and unlisted Brisbane-based mining services group, Mincom. He has one other board position, with Smorgon Steel, a significant industrial group with interests in steel products and processing.

His three chairmanships will net him around $720,000 in the coming year, based on existing disclosures. He will be paid $385,000 a year at Perpetual, $310,000 a year at David Jones and he was paid $125,000 at Mincom in 2004. He would be required to attend two lots of board meetings in Sydney, where he’s chairman and can’t avoid them, one lot in Brisbane and another at Smorgon in Melbourne.

Corporate governance groups say that three chairmanships is one too many. Then there’s the conflict between Perpetual, as one of the country’s major fund managers, and its investments in companies like David Jones. Sure, fund managers run the investments, but in some jobs it pays to remove all chances of a conflict of interest.

Perpetual isn’t alone. The AMP’s incoming chairman, Peter Mason, is a “senior adviser” at investment bank UBS, which has worked for the AMP in the past. Both companies should know better, especially Perpetual, which was big on doing the right thing under its former CEO Graham Bradley and fund manager Peter Morgan.