I
thought that a board member of Perpetual Trustees, indeed the company would have
been fully aware of the ins and outs and other nuances of the corporate
governance debate.

But the
appointment of board member, Bob Savage, to replace the departing Charles Curran
as Chairman of the Sydney based investment group – as announced here – is a bit rude.

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

His
three chairmanships net him around $720,000 a year 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 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. I know
that fund managers run the investments, but there’s the old adage of being purer
than the driven snow. 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 an 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 former CEO, Graham Bradley and fund manager, Peter
Morgan.