The same few hundred people are in charge of the nation’s top 200 companies in the ultimate money-go-round of who you know.

Here is just one example of how incestuous it gets.

Multi-millionaire Gretel Packer, sister of casino king James Packer, was once girlfriend of Phillip Brenner, 57, former head of urology at St Vincents Hospital. She is a member of the Art Gallery of NSW Board alongside Brenner’s wife, Catherine Brenner, who has recently stood aside from the position after the furore at the top of insurance giant AMP of which she was chair of the board on $660,000 before resigning last month. Phew.

President of the art gallery board is businessman David Gonski, the powerful mentor of Catherine Brenner.

Gonski was chair of the board of Coca-Cola Amatil when Brenner was appointed to her $254,338 board seat in April 2008.

Gonski is currently the chair of the ANZ Banking Group, for which he is paid $825,000. One of his board members is Ilana Atlas ($337,500) who is also now chair of the Coca-Cola Amatil board ($408,571) alongside Brenner.

Board seats on major companies come with massive paypackets but the recent damning revelations from the banking royal commission have reinforced that they also come with massive responsibilities. While management runs the company, the board of directors oversees corporate governance.

That’s the idea anyway.

Brenner, 46, told Vogue magazine in 2003 in an article about “Groomed for Success” when she was a director of corporate finance for ABN AMRO, that she spent up to $600 a month on beauty accessories. She might be able to save a bit of that now.

Her resignation from the AMP board came after the banking royal commission was told that Australia’s oldest life insurer could face criminal charges for misleading the corporate regulator over the scandal in which it deliberately charged customers for financial advice they never received.

The commission also heard that an “independent” report commissioned by AMP into the overcharging by top city law firm Clayton Utz went through 25 drafts as company executives, including Brenner, made alterations allegedly to exonerate the company’s former chief executive Craig Meller. Brenner has denied this. Meller has also resigned but denies any wrongdoing.

Brenner in May signalled she would step down from the Coca-Cola board next year. She remains on the board of construction giant Boral where a fellow director is Paul Rayner. Rayner, 63, is also on the Qantas board along with Brenner’s sister-in-law, Maxine Brenner, 55, who is married to Jodee Rich, the man behind failed phone company One.Tel Ltd. More wheels within wheels. Former NSW premier Nathan Rees calls it a close-knit directors’ “club” and questions whether anyone should be on a lot of boards at the same time.

“I don’t think it’s healthy,” says Rees, deputy leader of the Finance Sector Union. “It leads to group thinking. There is no question that there is a club.”

Board memberships, once seen as the first step after retirement, are now a career in themselves and directors are getting younger, says Australian Shareholders Association CEO Judith Fox.

She says a big turning point was the collapse of insurance giant HIH in 2001 with losses estimated at $5.3 billion, thrusting corporate governance into the spotlight.

“It highlighted that if you are in a director’s role, you have to give it your full attention,” Fox says.

“The management runs the company and the management is accountable to the board. The board’s role is to make sure management is doing a good job and to challenge them in a constructive way and provide strategic direction.”

Don’t expect board jobs to be advertised. Appointments are made through networking and headhunting companies.

But the reason the same people are on the big boards is because the boards are looking for experience of being on boards. It comes full circle.

Most of those pocketing salaries from the big boards come from similar backgrounds of private schools and investment banking or have been partners in major law and accounting firms.

Brenner actually bucked the trend as a Gundagai girl from the public Jetty High School in Coffs Harbour. A former investment banker, she stepped up to directorships with the help of Gonski.

As well as securing a mentor, completing a course at the Australian Institute of Company Directors also helps get your first board seat on a minor company or a charity before moving up into the big time. It also helps in networking. The AICD boasts membership “opens doors”.

The corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission is also in the thrall of the boys’ and girls’ “club” with Gonski on its external advisory panel. The banking royal commission has also noted that the panel has strong links to AMP.

Advisory panel member Holly Kramer, 53, was a director of AMP on $316,000 a year, until resigning about the same time as Brenner. Kramer is also the deputy chair of Australia Post on $112,235. She resigned ahead of the company’s AGM where she was up for re-election and ahead of an outcry from investors. She denies any wrongdoing.

Another advisory panel member is Andrew Mohl, a former managing director of AMP who wanted the chairman’s job when it went to Brenner in 2016.

Mohl, 62, has signalled he will resign from his $304,813 seat on the board of the Commonwealth Bank at its next AGM after the CBA’s money-laundering scandal. It is alleged the bank failed to report cash transactions of $10,000 or more made through its deposit machines to AUSTRAC as required under anti-money laundering laws.

Another member of the advisory panel is Craig Dunn, who replaced Mohl as head of AMP and now sits on the Westpac board.

Meanwhile a report into CBA’s corporate governance by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority was scathing. Released on May 1, it found that “CBA’s continued financial success dulled the senses of the institution” particularly management of non-financial risks.

Its findings beggar belief at such a major institution.

APRA found a widespread sense of complacency, a reactive stance in dealing with risks, being insular and not learning from experiences and mistakes, and an “overly collegial and collaborative working environment which lessened the opportunity for constructive criticism, timely decision-making and a focus on outcomes”.

The panel members were Dr John Laker, who was chairman of APRA until 2014 when it was supposed to be policing the CBA, Jillian Broadbent, who is a board member of Woolworths along with Holly Kramer and is a former board member of Coca-Cola Amatil and Qantas, and led by Professor Graeme Samuel, the former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman.

Instead of having professional directors, Nathan Rees wants boards to open up to include someone who actually works at the coal face of the company and who knows its nuts and bolts.

“With regards to AMP and the banking royal commission, it emerged that alarms were raised about many of the breaches by employees and if you had an employee on the board it would be a positive move,” Rees says.

The best of the company directors do the rounds of the shopfloor and talk to the workers. Not all of them, just the best.

Shareholder activist Stephen Mayne says the “gene pool” for company directors is so small that it is often harder to get off the board.

“To break up the club we need less of the usual suspects,” he adds.