Tucked away below the announcement of a new CEO and chairman at Telstra is the scalp of another James Hardie director - Peter Willcox offered his resignation to the Telstra board due to his concern that the James Hardie judgement may cause embarrassment to the company.
Note that that was not because of what the James Hardie judgement actually found, just that it might embarrass Telstra. Gee, after four years of Sol, you'd think the Telstra was beyond embarrassment.
And so it seems. The resignation was rejected because of his valuable contribution to a number of vital current issues.
Instead of being embarrassed by Willcox's role at James Hardie, the board asked him to stay on as a director for another six months until the annual meeting he just won't stand for re-election then.
Well that would be embarrassing and the directors' club probably wouldn't like the whole question of directors' responsibilities examined quite that closely. They're still smarting over the size of the votes against Barbara Ward at Qantas and Rod Eddington at Rio.
But there's also inside knowledge on the Telstra board about James Hardie. Yesterday's chairman Donald McGauchie is deputy chairman of James Hardie but he was lucky enough not to join until after the decision to move headquarters out of Australia and leave the asbestos victims short.
On the other hand, McGauchie was a loyal supporter of the board's handling of the entire mess under Meredith Hellicar as the cut-and-run blew up in their faces.
Indeed, it's all quite clubby at that end of town. Peter Willcox also used to be chairman of AMP where Hellicar had a board seat until resigning after the Hardie's judgement.
AMP accepted her resignation immediately.
Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor.
