Todd Sampson's departure and dancing with David Di Pilla
Qantas' loss of Todd Sampson went unmourned while HMC Capital's investor day intrigued the market.
The level of crazy has really taken off in the past few weeks – and I'm not even talking about the White House. On the ASX boards, Mineral Resources, WiseTech and now James Hardie are prime examples of scintillatingly poor governance. All give the lie to this notion that ESG is so woke, so secondary!
The James Hardie story – and here's my Monday piece ICYMI – has really floored me. How can you argue that governance isn't the primary consideration when we've just allowed foreign pirates to take 26 per cent of a fantastic Australian company and an ASX20 listing away from these shores without the approval of existing shareholders?
In my monthly AFR column, published today, I explored the shocking decision of the ASX to provide a waiver to James Hardie so the company could ram through this deal without a shareholder vote.
Joe Aston
Otherwise, I spent an inordinate slab of the week's remainder gasbagging on stage, I'm embarrassed to say. I closed the Manly Writers' Festival on Sunday afternoon, holding forth on Qantas. The next morning, Qantas announced the resignation, finally, of celebrity adman Todd Sampson from its board.
Outside of Alan Joyce, Sampson has probably been the greatest lightning rod for public anger about the airline's 2020-2023 era of shame. I am not in the camp that blames Sampson especially for the destruction of Qantas brand trust, though I am naturally amused by his complete lack of value to Qantas in that crisis.
His defenders – such as fellow Gruen identity Dee Madigan – make the reasonable point that Sampson was not an executive running the Qantas marketing department (and in any event, Qantas' reputational collapse had nothing to do with its advertising) and that it's "unfair for him to take all the blame".