ASA queries game of ‘musical chairs’
AFL and Woodside Petroleum chair Richard Goyder will take up the same role at Qantas Airways in an appointment that will arguably make him the nation’s busiest boardroom leader.
Qantas has announced that Mr Goyder, the former chief of retail titan Wesfarmers, will take over as chair of the airline when Leigh Clifford steps down from the role in October.
Mr Clifford is retiring from the post at Australia’s flag carrier after 11 years.
The decision by Mr Goyder to take on another prominent chair position has raised concern among governance advisers about his workload as leader of the board at three of the nation’s most high-profile organisations.
Mr Goyder took over as chair of the nation’s biggest sporting code in April last year.
He became chair of Woodside, the nation’s biggest oil and gas pureplay, in August.
The Qantas role adds another major corporate position to Mr Goyder’s dance card and makes him one of the few corporate leaders to have multiple ASX 50 chair positions.
Mr Goyder also chairs JDRF Australia, a not-forprofit organisation that funds type-1 diabetes research, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and children’s charity Channel 7 Telethon Trust.
Australian Shareholders’ Association chief Judith Fox said Mr Goyder’s move to lead the Qantas board raised clear issues about whether he would be stretching himself too thin.
“We do worry (that) – especially in this climate where all companies are not just under intense scrutiny but also in an age of disruption – there is a lot on both the plates of boards and the plates of chairmen,” Ms Fox said yesterday.
“The question is do they have enough time to devote to it?”
The ASA holds that a director should have no more than five directorships, with a chair position counting as two. This covers both listed and unlisted organisations such as charities or government boards.
Along with his other commitments, Mr Goyder’s Qantas appointment means he now has the equivalent of as many as 12 directorships by ASA standards.
Shareholders vote for director appointments, rather than directly electing chairs, meaning his appointment will not need to be ratified by investors.
Mr Goyder secured a three-year term on the Qantas board last October, so he will not face re-election until 2020.
Ms Fox said the ASA would be engaging with Mr Goyder over his workload, but added “it would be hard to see what a good rationale would be” for so many appointments.
Ownership Matters cofounder Dean Paatsch said the proxy advisory service did not set hard and fast rules around individual workloads.
But he noted that Mr Goyder’s proposed workload would span three complicated and fast moving organisations.