Adman Todd Sampson, who today told Qantas shareholders the airline brand has suffered “considerable” damage, survived a protest vote to keep his seat on the board of directors.
Sampson, the former CEO of Leo Burnett Australia and a panelist on ABC TV's Gruen, saw a swing against him of almost one-third of the vote at the company’s annual general meeting.
The meeting was marked with shouts of "shame" when chairman Richard Goyder shut down discussion of the trading in Qantas shares by former CEO Alan Joyce.
Shareholders had been urged by proxy advisors to vote against Sampson’s re-election to the board which he first joined in 2015 on the grounds that, with his background in advertising, he had a “heightened responsibility” for reputational issues.
Qantas has been found by the High Court to have acted unlawfully in sacking 1,700 ground handling workers and outsourcing their work.
And competition watchdog the ACCC has launched action in the Federal Court alleging Qantas engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct, by advertising tickets for more than 8,000 flights that it had already cancelled but not removed from sale.
Sampson told the shareholders he was excited when asked to join the board eight years ago.
“It's an important iconic company and I thought I could make a difference,” he says.
“I reflected a lot on my decision to seek re-election.
"I just want to say I take full responsibility for my role on the board and the attention that has brought.
“Our brand and reputation have suffered considerable damage … that we can and will repair.
“I've spent a career helping other clients in similar brand situations that we now find ourselves in.
“This repairing, at least in the initial stages, is not so much about advertising and marketing, it's about customer experience. It's about doing not saying.
"This is when my experience will be most valuable.
“So I thank you for all the support to date and, with your continued support, I look forward to helping rebuild Qantas back to its iconic status.”
One shareholder asked: “What tangible contributions has Mr Sampson brought to the board and the company given that the public sentiment that was obvious to everyone was seemingly not presented to the board over the last few years.
Goyda, the chairman, replied: “Directors come to the board with a range of experiences and in fact we encourage all directors to make contributions on areas where they may not have personal experience because sometimes that can be the most important observations.
“Todd has and we believe will continue to make a very strong contribution to the board on many fronts.
“I've talked a lot today about needing to improve on where we've been and putting in place all the actions required to do that,
“But it is wrong to think that there wasn't visibility on the issues. The challenge has been fixing the issues as quickly as we wanted to and doing it in a way that has brought our customers with us.
“Clearly, in many cases, we haven't done that.”
More than 80% of the votes at the AGM went against the company's remuneration report, the guide to director and senior management pay.
This is what's called a first strike and one of the largest protest votes by shareholders in Australian history.
The vote isn't binding on the board of directors or the CEO. They can implement the remuneration report if they wish.
However, if shareholders vote against a remuneration report a second time, all board positions are spilled.
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