When the votes were finally counted the News Corp. board of directors won re-election. But if we leave aside those from the Murdoch family and close allies, the story we can read from the rest of the votes suggest that shareholders wanted to rock the boat, but not too much. Sure, a majority of the so-called "independent" shareholders votes against having James and Lachlan – Rupert Murdoch's two sons on the board – as directors. They also vented almost equal anger, though, at Natalie Bancroft, who has represented the Bancroft family since they agreed, reluctantly, to accept News Corp.'s controversial 2007 bid for Dow Jones & Co., the company they once controlled. But the octogenarian chairman and CEO saw much more modest dissent. And the shareholder resolution to split the chairman and CEO role garnered little more than 1.5 million votes, of more than 680 million cast. Read another way, barely 0.2 per cent supported the iconic mechanism of corporate governance, and only about a third of a per cent of the "independents".
What the vote seems to show is that shareholders want to protest, but they don't really want change. News Corp. has performed well by most measures. The phone-hacking scandal that led to the abrupt closure of the oldest newspaper in the stable was worth a wrist-slapping, but not worth destabilising the company. It would be a different story in a different company, especially if the family of the founder didn't have 40+ per cent of the votes in his pocket. News is different from most industries. And the ownership and voting at News Corp. isn't that different from a lot of other news companies.
Source document: The News Corp. 8-K filing gives detail of the vote.
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