The Long March through the institutions is almost certainly the most successful strategy the Cultural Marxists have ever adopted. Academia surrendered without a whimper in the 70s and 80s, the mainstream media and public service came next. Now business, the very foundation of capitalism, is under assault, and the surrender monkeys are rushing to lay down their arms.
As economist Judith Sloan has long warned, leftist unions are using the almost bottomless treasure chests gifted to them by compulsory superannuation laws to mount a sustained assault on company boards. Super funds are increasingly weighing down corporate guidelines with “progressive” “diversity” requirements, and gutless boards are rushing to get woke and go broke.
Some patriarchal dinosaurs are holding out against the bright new “progressive” utopia – and raking in the dosh.
Retail billionaire Gerry Harvey, founder and chairman of the Harvey Norman chain, has blasted some of the custodians of the nation’s $2.8 trillion superannuation industry for their obsession with gender-diversity guidelines and “tick-a-box” mentality to corporate governance.
Mr Harvey said he was frustrated by super fund executives and their boards, so-called corporate governance experts and fellow travellers in the social corporate responsibility industry who were pressuring him to change his business practices, saying if he followed their guidelines Harvey Norman would “go backwards”. Rival retailers such as Myer and David Jones had slavishly adhered to the corporate governance orders laid down by these groups, he said, but their businesses were now paying the price, with his own Harvey Norman “beating the shit out of them’’.
These corporations are forgetting their sole responsibility – that of making money for shareholders – by being too intent on meeting quotas rather than recruiting the best and brightest.
He said the nation’s two big department stores had diversity in the boardroom, with female directors and independent directors, but in most cases they weren’t even retailers.
“Myer and David Jones get all of that box ticking right according to corporate governance rules,’’ Mr Harvey said, “and super funds buy shares in them as they tick all the boxes.”
When asked about the pressure coming from super funds and corporate governance activists, Mr Harvey told The Weekend Australian […]“They want me to toe the line […] and that can be a big problem because they are not practical people. Our results speak for themselves over a period of 50 years.’’
Those results were on display yesterday when Harvey Norman posted a 7.2 per cent increase in full-year net profit to $402.32 million at a time when most retailers are struggling to grow profits.
Others are going broke as they get woke.
David Jones on Thursday revealed its operating profit had almost halved to $37m…
Harvey Norman is currently valued at more than $5.1bn, which is almost four times the combined value of Myer and David Jones.
Harvey is not alone. Businessman Chris Corrigan has accused the corporate governance of bullying companies into bowing to their “diversity” demands. Union-run superannuation funds are pressuring companies to “improve gender diversity”. But, just as Raelene Castle knows bugger-all about playing rugby, Harvey argues that almost none of the quota hacks that unions are trying to shoe-horn onto boards have ever run a public company.
“I’ve been running a public company for 100 years. They’ve never done it, and you are telling me how to run it.
“And I’m supposed to listen to you? And I hear what you say, and I think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
theaustralian.com.au/business/leadership/dash-for-diversity-costs-djs-myer-harvey