AMP directors fall on swords after losing board lottery

In the bitter history of AMP sword play, yesterday looms large as three directors, all women, resigned.

The markets have been screaming for the heads of AMP board members

In the bitter history of AMP sword play, yesterday looms large as three directors, all women, resigned — two of them just steps ahead of an investor vote that would have wiped them from the board as the clamour for accountability at the shaken financial giant grows.

But their fate was the lottery of the boardroom — both Holly Kramer and Vanessa Wallace had been told several months ago by former chairman Catherine Brenner that a decision had been made to put them forward for re-election at the May annual general meeting, although both still had time to run under board rules.

Kramer was elected to the AMP board in October 2015 and Wallace in March 2016. In another time, they might have been put up for re-election the following year.

The third director to quit yesterday, Patty Akopiantz, was the longest-serving director at AMP, having been appointed in 2011. She was regarded as close to Brenner. None of the three directors were more, or less, accountable than their colleagues. But Kramer and Wallace had been selected by the chair in calmer times, to stand for re-election.

But now, with the markets screaming for heads, Akopiantz decided to join them to help clear the decks.

With the royal commission into banking misconduct putting the spotlight on AMP’s shocking past practices of charging unwitting customers fees for no service, calls for accountability have rent the company. Brenner, chief executive Craig Meller and general counsel Brian Salter have all lost their jobs.

Holly Kramer was preparing for whatever came. She had pressed hard with other directors and with Brenner, for Brenner to resign. Kramer had also been thinking about how to act herself, in the best interests of the company.

But in the week and a half after Brenner was forced by fellow directors to resign during a board meeting on Sunday April 29, the board was stunned by the con­tinued calls for heads to roll.

The view formed that they needed to urgently find an external chairman. Mike Wilkins, who had stepped into the breach as acting CEO and chairman after Brenner and Meller were gone, had personal stresses with illness in the family and, moreover, he had been on the risk committee.

Some directors thought they should wait a few weeks or longer to find a new chair; others thought they should move fast. Three directors pushed very hard. Wallace, Kramer and Akopiantz believed AMP needed to move immediately. They pushed, arguing the company needed stability. The rest of the board coalesced. The drama unfolding outside the company was so hot that it was a furnace within. Of the names floated for chairman, David Murray’s was top of the list; the former CBA head and chair of the financial system inquiry had an impeccable reputation and a deep knowledge of the industry. Murray would bring his own views and strategy to create accountability and he might have been able to stem the calls for directors to fall this week.

When it became clear that the rage was coming through in early votes, Kramer and Wallace resolved to quit. Akopiantz announced she would go too — but at the end of the year.

The boardroom bloodbath at the AMP comes close, but is not equal to, the extraordinary day 18 years ago when the AMP chairman Ian Burgess and four directors fell on their swords on April 3, 2000 in a bid to stabilise the company after a string of disasters.

But where that drama saw the boardroom split open like a piece of fruit, the events of the past week saw AMP’s directors find common ground.