The Directors Club
The chart below looks at America’s 30 largest corporations; and only three do not share common directors. The Directors Club seems alive and well, and it is little surprise the Club is often perceived to look after its own.
I thought I would go through the same exercise for the top 20 Australian listed companies, from the $142 billion Commonwealth Bank of Australia to the $17 billion Amcor.
Five of the companies do not have common directors. Excluding Scentre Group and Westfield Corporation, Directors across more than one Board (of the top 20) include:
Lindsay Maxsted: WBC, BHP and TCL;
Michael Chaney: NAB, WPL and WES;
Brian Long: CBA, BXB (and Ten Network Holdings);
Ilana Atlas: ANZ, WFD (and Coca Cola Amatil);
Patricia Cross: WOW, MQG;
Christine O’Reilly: CSL, TCL; and
Graham Liebelt: ANZ, AMC.
Given there are 184 directors across our top 20 companies, this “doubling up” was not nearly as bad as I had feared. The slowly increasing breadth of the Boards of our major listed companies seems to coincide with the internationalization of many of our leading companies; the wonderful work done by Elizabeth Broderick, the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner; and the increasing availability of entrepreneurs coming particularly from our information technology, online and social media sectors.
To learn more about our domestic and global funds, please click here, or contact me, David Buckland, on 02 8046 5000 or at dbuckland@montinvest.com.
Chief Executive Officer of Montgomery Investment Management, David Buckland has over 30 years of industry experience. David is a deeply knowledgeable and highly experienced financial services executive. Prior to joining Montgomery in 2012, David was CEO and Executive Director of Hunter Hall for 11 years, as well as a Director at JP Morgan in Sydney and London for eight years.
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