Mark this down as the moment wokeness lost its way. On Monday prominent advisory firm Ownership Matters advised its clients to kick Katie Page, the highly regarded chief executive, off the board of Harvey Norman at its annual general meeting later this month. Page helped build the company.
The same firm has advised investor clients to elect Stephen Mayne, a man with no retail knowledge, no serious board experience, no known management skills. He’s running on an agenda that includes greater gender diversity for boards. Boom, boom.
READ MORE: Super fund adviser’s ‘bizarre’ bid to axe Harvey Norman CEO for activist
Except this is not a joke. The absurdity of these voting recommendations by Ownership Matters is best explained by posing one simple question to the firm’s big institutional clients: would they agree to replacing their most respected and experienced board member, male or female, with Mayne, a noisy activist and local councillor with no corporate runs on the board? Mayne has tried 49 times to get elected to the boards of Australia’s largest companies and failed 49 times.
The behind-the-scenes hypocrisy is obvious. In the voting advisory report obtained by The Australian, Ownership Matters recommends voting against Page’s re-election to make way for more independent directors. Meanwhile, many of its industry super fund clients are members of a lobby group that fought against mandating at least one-third independent directors on their boards. Was Animal Farm written for these funds? Some boards, it seems, are more equal than others.
That Ownership Matters has come up with this wacky equation adds more context to the sorry state of some sections of corporate Australia. This is a circus act, a pointless exercise because Harvey Norman executive chairman Gerry Harvey, his wife, Page, and the Norman estate have a controlling interest in the company. But even to suggest that Page, a serious corporate success story, be replaced with a man who is not in her league is an insult to hardworking mum-and-dad investors who own shares, directly or indirectly, in the $5.23bn company.
Page has flicked the distraction. “Let me get this straight? Ownership Matters want to replace a woman with tonnes of retail experience, senior management skills and board experience with a bloke with none of that running on an agenda of greater board diversity? Go figure,” she told The Australian this week.
The silver lining is that this cunning plan to oust Page and insert Mayne on the board exposes the diversity agenda as utter baloney. When diversity means dumping a woman with decades of serious corporate and board experience for a man famous for self-promotion, it has truly lost its way.
Mayne seems to struggle to walk a straight woke line too, having published — and last year apologising for — a sleazy online list in 2001 that rated prominent female politicians and staff in the Victorian Bracks government. Some of “Bracksy’s Babes” were described as “oozing sex and fun”, “very very tasty” and “dark, sensual and very attractive”, and were labelled as “every boy’s dream”, “sweet as pie but looks tough as nails”, “feisty Italian honey” and “Beverly Hills 90210 type babe”.
The tawdry list was removed more than 15 years later, only after one of the women complained.
The Crikey founder has amassed a Lilliputian share portfolio of teensy holdings that get him into AGMs where he asks hundreds of questions of management and boards. Good for him. Everyone needs a purpose in life.
With 23 Harvey Norman shares to his name, Mayne must be counting on some corporate cred from the imprimatur of Ownership Matters. The other scenario is that Ownership Matters will be marked down for backing Mayne and not Page. Even Mayne says Page should stay on the board.
Indeed, some will wonder whether this weird game by the advisory firm, with clients that include big super funds, has anything to do with the fact that in late August Harvey Norman’s chairman blasted the custodians of our $2.8 trillion superannuation industry for their obsession with mindless “box-ticking” corporate governance processes. Harvey told this newspaper super funds risked losing money for members by undermining profit with their social engineering crusades.
This colourful entrepreneur is willing to say out loud that rigid corporate governance rules are killing innovation and sound business practices. As Harvey told The Australian a few months ago, compared with Myer and David Jones, both slavish adherents to ticking the right boxes on gender and diversity, Harvey Norman is “beating the shit out of them”.
Using companies as Trojan horses to ram through social agendas, the doyens of corporate governance fashion understand dissent must be put down in case it encourages more. Page is not just Harvey’s wife, she is a stellar example of why vanilla, one-size-fits-all governance rules do not deliver the best results for shareholders, customers or employees.
Harvey told The Australian this week: “I have been on a public company board as chairman since 1972 and … never seen anything as bizarre as the fact the best retail executive in Australia is to be replaced by a ratbag called Stephen Mayne who has failed . . . every time he’s run for a board seat of a serious company.”
Ownership Matters’ voting advisory report recommends a “no” vote against two executive directors, Page and David Ackery, on the basis the board needs more independent directors. Even if one agreed about more independence, knocking off someone of Page’s calibre and experience for Mayne is bonkers. Even more so because in its voting report about Myer’s 2018 AGM, the same advisory firm recommended against new director Lyndsey Cattermole because of her lack of retail experience.
This is best seen as part of a wider, longer game. If activists had their way, collectivist social agendas would run roughshod over the rights of individual shareholders. They are willing to sacrifice Harvey Norman shareholders, and respected, experienced directors, to score a collective win for one-size-fits-all corporate governance rules that encompass gender, diversity, and any other issue that takes their fancy. Board members, at super funds or other companies, have duties to act in the best interests of their members and shareholders.
Harvey warned board members “if they take this advice (from Ownership Matters), they should forfeit their right to sit on any … board in this country. If they did do that, they are not a fit and proper person to be on that board, it’s as simple as that.”
With Christmas around the corner, along comes this circus-act distraction. It is the silly season after all, but more of this will destroy great Australian companies.
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