New Telstra director Maxine Brenner hit with 17pc protest vote

afr.com:

New Telstra director Maxine Brenner has been hit with a 17 per cent vote against her election to the telecommunications group’s board after one proxy firm raised concerns over how she has handled corporate governance issues while on the board of Qantas.

While 82.7 per cent of proxy votes were cast in Ms Brenner’s favour, 16.9 per cent were cast against her at Telstra’s annual general meeting on Tuesday. This compares with 99 per cent of votes cast in favour of another new director, Ming Long.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) had opposed her election after Ms Brenner was named to the Telstra board in February, citing the “material failures of governance, board and risk oversight and fiduciary duties” at Qantas, where Ms Brenner has been a director since August 2013.

She is stepping down from the airline’s board in February 2024.

Asked by one investor to explain why shareholders should vote for Ms Brenner given that she was “responsible for Qantas’s governance failure” and didn’t have any experience in customer service, Mr Mullen said any questions related to Qantas were “inappropriate” and that Telstra would not be answering them.

Ms Brenner was “smart, engaged, very experienced and is a strong contributor,” Mr Mullen said. “Shareholders are very lucky to have someone of her calibre representing them on the Telstra board and we don’t intend to say anything more.”

However, Mr Mullen said shareholders should give the board “a little credit” when recommending directors for election. “We would never put anyone up for election who we did not feel would do a really good job on shareholders’ behalf.”

ISS’s local head of research, Vas Kolesnikoff, told The Australian Financial Review in early October that Qantas board