AMP announcement on Brenner’s resignation is a joke

AMP has today carefully avoided any acceptance of the fact it was caught stealing from customers and lying to the regulator.

AMP legal chief Brian Salter has been thrown under a bus. Pic: Hollie Adams

AMP directors were in talks late last night before “accepting” the resignation of chair Catherine Brenner, which came after a barrage of criticism from shareholders effectively forcing her departure.

Using all the right words, AMP has today carefully avoided any acceptance of the fact it was caught stealing from customers and lying to the regulator.

Somehow those basic facts have gone missing in a flurry of words about good governance which are nothing but a joke, given Ms Brenner should have stepped down the day she realised a couple of years ago the company was stealing from customers.

Brenner said today she was leaving to help restore trust in the AMP, but went a long way short of accepting any responsibility for the scandals.

Indeed former general counsel Brian Salter has had deferred pay cancelled and has taken the blame for the Clayton Utz revelation in the royal commission.

The board has pushed Salter under a bus and Brenner is leaving because she is responsible for governance.

Legal advice from King & Wood Mallesons study cleared her and former boss Craig Meller of any wrongdoing in relation to the Clayton Utz report into AMP misconduct.

The board of course claimed it was Salter and not it that talked with Clayton Utz on the myriad drafts of its report, but the question is on whose advice was he acting?

Former CEO Craig Mellor and outgoing chairman Catherine Brenner “did not act inappropriately”, says AMP Pic: AAP

The three directors up for re-election — lawyer Andrew Harmos, Holly Kramer and Vanessa Wallace — all intend to stand at next week’s annual meeting but logically should all be voted off the board.

Investors were gunning for Brenner but surely all three are implicated by the same offences and arguably failed to do their duty to shareholders.

Harmos has been on the board since last year so is a relatively new member but Kramer and Wallace were involved in the long-running attempt to play down the scandals.

Incoming executive chair Mike Wilkins will immediately look for a new director who may also serve as the ongoing chair.

But he knows as well as anyone AMP is in a fight for its own survival in the wake of the royal commission revelations.

The advice business which was at the centre of the allegations makes no money but provided the cash flow for AMP to invest and expand its operations.

AMP has stolen $33 million from clients but there is a $12 billion empire to defend and that is the task before Wilkins.

A break up of the empire looms.