By Scott Murdoch and Christine Chen
SYDNEY, Dec 2 (Reuters) – A second influential proxy adviser has recommended institutional investors vote against re-electing Westpac non-executive director Peter Nash, citing his six-year stint on the board of the troubled Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
CGI Glass Lewis said in a new report on Tuesday that investors should vote against Nash who joined the Westpac board in March 2018 and chairs the board’s audit committee.
The recommendation follows a similar call by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), which said Nash’s time on the ASX board and previous career as a senior partner at KPMG should prohibit his role on the Westpac board.
KPMG was appointed as an auditor last year for Westpac, Australia’s second-largest lender by market capitalisation, and ISS said it believed there were corporate governance concerns, with Nash on the bank’s board.
Westpac declined to comment, while Nash did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Westpac’s shares are up nearly 15.2% so far this year.
The ASX, which is Australia’s stock exchange operator, is facing increasing regulatory pressure over a string of failures in recent years, including a trading and settlement outage last year.
The ASX’s announcements platform was down on Monday, delaying hundreds of company announcements and placing about 80 companies with price-sensitive news in a trading halt.
“As the chair of the (ASX) audit and risk committee, Mr. Nash bears responsibility for the oversight failures that contributed to this breakdown in operational risk management and the resulting issues,” CGI Glass Lewis said.
“The insufficient response and oversight has resulted in these risks materialising into a major operational incident and loss of shareholder value at ASX.”
Proxy advisers are influential in Australia, where the majority of institutional investors generally follow the voting advice given at company’s annual meetings.
Westpac’s annual meeting will be held on December 11 in Sydney.
(Reporting by Scott Murdoch and Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
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