Qantas has Australia’s most powerful and best-connected corporate board and they have collectively just copped a massive vote of no confidence from their shareholders after the Airline Partners Australia takeover bid failed. But does that mean the likes of James Packer, former Qantas CEO James Strong, CBA chairman John Schubert and General Peter Cosgrove should all resign? Not necessarily.

Qantas chair Margaret Jackson was on the way out anyway and should expedite that process. She was the link between the board and management that kept them a united team endorsing the controversial bid. Jackson’s intemperate comments made from a hospital bed about investors who reject the offer having a mental problem left her looking just too cosy with the raiders.

Accepting the bid in the first place was fine because $5.45-a-share looked like great value back in November. However, things can change and they certainly did with Qantas as profit forecasts were twice upgraded, global airline valuations took off and the broader industrial market soared 20%.

The biggest mistake the board made was not playing the “things have changed” card and withdrawing their endorsement. After all, they’d negotiated away APA’s proposed break-fee so this wouldn’t have cost shareholders anything.

CEO Geoff Dixon and finance director Peter Gregg were always massively conflicted given the huge pay day the private equity bidders were promising them. They shouldn’t have attended the two board meetings over the weekend. However, Dixon is well-respected by the market and his premature departure would cause share price weakness.

There are some interesting Qantas parallels with Alinta where chairman John Poynton got way too close to the management and eventually walked, allowing former Woodside CEO John Akehurst to step up as a genuinely independent chairman. Similarly, Jackson is simply too cosy with Geoff Dixon and should leave, but who should take over as chairman?

James Strong is already over-committed, chairing Insurance Australia Group, Woolworths and Ripcurl. Besides, he’s too close to Dixon from their decades working together.

The best internal candidate is John Schubert, who is known to be a stickler for management accountability. Just ask former Commonwealth Bank CEO David Murray who copped more questions from Schubert, the current CBA chairman, than anyone else over his 13 years running the bank.

Schubert’s only other major gig is on the BHP-Billiton board where he might one day succeed Don Argus as chairman. He performed tremendously as chairman of Worley-Parson from 2000-04, was a solid Business Council president and has even seen the light on climate change, something an airline chairman needs to do in 2007.