...and all that, so that's what I'm blaming for being wrong, big style, about the BSkyB vote. The headline vote against James Murdoch was a bit shy of 19% (quite a bit above what I was expecting). Bad for any company, bad for any chair, well above average, and putting him the 1% of directors most unpopular with shareholders this year.
But when you back out the News Corp vote it gets very interesting. A few media outlets have got this badly wrong, including Pesto, and suggested that about a third of indie shareholders failed to back JM. Not so. You need to look at the actual number of shares voted.
The company says 1,105m shares vote for, 255m opposed, and 105m abstained. But, on a conservative reading, News Corp voted about 650m of those shares. Taking that out of the total means that the indie shareholder support for James is only about 55% I think.
That is a serious loss of confidence that the board will struggle to spin. If you're a shareholder and you think this company needs an independent chair now is the time to be pushing for it.
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