From John Durie today:
FAIRFAX chair Roger Corbett is under increasing pressure from a more activist share register and a 15 per cent holder in Gina Rinehart who won't step back in a hurry. The first thing Corbett needs to do is drop the nonsense argument about the need to commit to editorial independence at board level. It is an artifice used by a chairman who can't rely on past or near-term performance to justify his refusal to open the board to new faces...Corbett's problem is the Fairfax board has a long history of being dysfunctional. It's a trophy board which on many occasions in recent times has been unworkable. If it was OK for John Fairfax to have two board seats with 12 per cent of the company, then just maybe there is a case for two new board members. But having set the precedent, Corbett's predecessors didn't leave him much by way of governance excellence with which to man the barricades.
