Eleven days ago, it was Casablanca at AMP. Now it’s more like the Hunger Games.

On 19 April, the AMP board declared, with the elan of Claude Rains, that it was shocked – shocked – that gouging was going on at the company. CEO Craig Meller, who was already in the exit lounge, was sent packing, director Mike Wilkins made acting replacement and General Counsel Brian Salter put on leave while a review was undertaken of that “independent” Clayton Utz report into the matter that was anything but independent (Clutz have managed to avoid any fallout so far, but probably best to look elsewhere for your next “independent report”).

As everyone outside the AMP boardroom knew on the 19th, all that was never going to be enough.

After Friday’s royal commission hearing and the prospect of criminal charges being brought to bear — prediction: any charges will take years and no one will serve a day behind bars — the AMP board gathered yesterday to decide who would be the next victim. As chair, Catherine Brenner has had a target on her back for weeks. Out she went; Wilkins will now act as executive chairman (being elevated rapidly from director to CEO and thence to exec chairman shall henceforth be known as the Brenner Pass). Brian Salter was given the flick altogether, his last act of service to AMP to do double duty as sacrificial victim. He lost deferred benefits as well. The remaining board members (and presumably any new additions) will be paid 25% less for this year — not exactly a savage punishment; their pay will fall by around $80,000 to just over $100,000 for the rest of this year, but they will still get more than a quarter of a million dollars each. How about handing some of that back?

However, the board gave itself a clean bill of health about the Clayton Utz affair. “Having considered and assessed the matters, the board is satisfied that Catherine Brenner, former Chief Executive Officer Craig Meller and the other directors did not act inappropriately in relation to the preparation of the Clayton Utz report.” Phew — that’s OK then. We were worried for a while, but if you say so it was all fine, well great. Oh, and “AMP will be making a formal submission to the Royal Commission by Friday 4 May in response to the matters raised in closing submissions by Counsel Assisting the Royal Commission.” 

That presumably includes what AMP already promised, its explanation of how the report could be the subject of extensive editorial discussions between AMP and Clayton Utz, and have sentences expressly inserted by the chair, but still be represented to the regulator as “independent”. By the way, it’s the latter bit that’s the problem — no one has suggested there was anything inappropriate about the board fiddling with the report; the problem was trying to pass it off as something it manifestly wasn’t, the view of a wholly independent third party brought in to assess the situation. Presumably, to the extent there was anything “inappropriate”, the board would like us to believe it was Salter who was at fault. 

If Salter is the fall guy for the report, AMP is the fall guy for the big financial institutions. The royal commission’s Rowena Orr also suggested civil charges against the banks last week. In other circumstances, that would put pressure on the bank boards to show some accountability. But everyone’s focused on AMP, as if gouging customers and misleading the regulator was uniquely the province of the mob at Circular Quay. The downside is, now a standard has been set: directors are accountable for misconduct even if, officially, they haven’t done anything inappropriate. There should be some very nervous directors at the banks when the next set of royal commission hearings roll around.