Imperilled AMP board to hold crisis meeting Sunday

Former AMP CEO Craig Meller and chairman Catherine Brenner at the AMP annual meeting at Sydney Town Hall. (John Feder/The Australian)

Imperilled $11.7 billion Australian wealth manager AMP will on Sunday hold a crisis meeting of its board of directors to consider the future of its wounded chairman Catherine Brenner.

It is likely to be the final AMP board meeting chaired by the 47-year-old Brenner, a protege of Australia’s most influential corporate figure David Gonski.

The urgent summoning of AMP’s nine person board follows the explosive recommendations to Kenneth Hayne’s Financial Services Royal Commission on Friday that senior executives of the wealth manager should face criminal prosecution for misleading the corporate regulator ASIC.

“AMP adopted an attitude towards the regulator that was not forthright or honest and demonstrated an attempt to mislead,” counsel assisting the Royal Commission Rowena Orr told commissioner Hayne.

Orr said the misbehaviour was “attributable to the governance and cultural practices at AMP”.

Those chilling and likely career ending words will echo around the Sunday telephone hook-up, which Margin Call understands Brenner will lead.

Former investment banker Brenner has chaired the stumbling financial services group since June 2016 after she unexpectedly took over from Macquarie Bank’s former Melbourne executive chairman Simon McKeon.