Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The Murdochs big show

I did not watch all of the Murdochs' appearance before the UK Parliamentary committee overnight. From what I did see I reach the following conclusions.

1. If the scenario painted by Rupert and James that the UK issues were all at the delegation level of the CEO in the UK then Rupert should have declined to appear.

2. Rupert clearly revealed that there is no effective managerial risk management process. There are things that occurred that were not notified to News Corp's senior executives that should have been.

3. Rupert Murdoch is now old - you could not reach a conclusion from watching his performance that he should be the CEO and Chairman of a major listed company.

4. News Limited's approach to the ethical questions has been to deal with them exclusively as legal questions, hence the excessive reliance on investigations by police rather than their own investigations.

From my purchase point the travesty would be if James takes a fall and Rupert survives. The problem of culture and governance that befell the company and resulted in its need to close NotW starts and ends with Rupert.

How can the shareholders, including his own family, not see that?

But really this video says it all...




Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

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