Don Mercer was fired by the ANZ bank after doing all the hard work to rescue the joint from its most recent near-death experience.

Don is now Chair of the Institute of Company Directors.  He has no love for the great and the goode who sit at the board tables of Australia's blue-chip companies.

He is in a great position to "tell it like it is" and he has done some of this in a gem of an interview with Fiona Buffini in today's AFR.  Some snippets follow.

* "Non-executive directors contribute "precious little" to listed companies and public expectations of what they can do are "unrealistic." "

* "These are people who are part-time and increasingly non-expert because they have to be independant."  [Ed: Mercer could also have pointed out that if a non-executive director relies on his salary or salaries from ned-hood, he is in no real sense independant.]

* "I think an honest director would be the first to acknowledge that they've done precious little except encourage management ... you can encourage them, you can monitor, you can do all sorts of things but if it works well, if you claim the credit for it, you're kidding yourself."

* "Mr Mercer said rthat the focus on "independance" in recent regulation of boards and auditors was "absolute rubbish",..."

This article alone is worth the price of the AFR.  Go for it Don Mercer.  Go for it Fiona Buffini.

[NB. The AFR website is refusing to open this morning, so I am unable to provide a web link.]
 
{NB#2.  The AICD website is linked here.}