James Packer’s unexplained resignation from the Qantas board on Friday smacked of a dummy spit that was designed to send a message of support to Margaret Jackson.

While the Qantas statement claimed that Jackson unveiled her retirement plans at the start of the two-day board meeting, she is believed to have resisted the idea of making a public statement about it because this has been portrayed as a forced departure.

However, James Packer really has got off lightly from this whole exercise. There he was sitting in the Macquarie Bank top 20 shareholder list while recommending a deal that would have significantly enriched the Millionaires Factory.

James had an additional interest in the private equity bid through Allco Equity Partners, which is run by the former CEO of PBL Peter Yates and was slated to invest a whopping $950 million in Qantas to become the largest shareholder in a privatised Qantas with a 26.8% economic interest.

James owns 20% of Challenger Financial Services, worth $710 million this morning, and it in turn has a 7.5% stake in Allco Equity Partners. On a fully diluted basis, this means James would have directly owned 0.4% of Qantas if the private equity deal had gone through, before considering his $73 million investment in Macquarie Bank.

If you’re wondering why none of the luminaries on the Qantas board broke ranks to reject the APA offer as events unfolded, I’m guessing that the troika of Geoff Dixon, Margaret Jackson and James Packer would have been very difficult to stare down.

James is close to Macquarie’s bid mastermind Nicholas Moore and Margaret clearly values her relationship with Australia’s richest man, especially since her appointment to his Consolidated Press advisory board last year.

It was disappointing that James never put some serious money into Qantas after becoming a director in 2004 and he really should go now, rather than at the AGM, given that he’s not up for re-election in 2007 after shareholders voted him back for an additional three years seven months ago.

Besides, Australia’s richest man is also close to being the busiest director in the country. How on earth does he protect a $5.5 billion investment in PBL and be CEO of the $3 billion private investment empire? He even represents both PBL and the family company on boards such as Seek, which he chairs, Challenger Financial Services and Gold Coast property developer Sunland.

Add to that things like visits in the private jet to inspect the Pilbara operations of Fortescue Metals and it’s no wonder One.Tel didn’t get enough serious attention when trouble first hit.