Call for News Corp vote against Murdochs

News Corp faced intensifying pressure for corporate governance changes as the biggest investor advisory group in the US recommended shareholders vote against the re-election of 13 of the media company’s 15 directors, including Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive.

The ISS advisory group said that the phone-hacking scandal at News Corp’s London-based newspaper group had “laid bare a striking lack of stewardship and failure of independence” by the board that had led to enormous financial and reputational costs to shareholders. ISS recommended that shareholders vote against the re-election of Mr Murdoch, his sons James, the deputy chief operating officer, and Lachlan, as well as the chief operating officer Chase Carey and all but two of the remaining directors, including non-executives such as Sir Rod Eddington, former chief executive of British Airways, and José María Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain. Only Joel Klein and James Breyer, both new directors, won a recommendation of support. ISS also recommended a vote against the executive compensation motion on the meeting’s agenda on the grounds that it might not be appropriate for Rupert Murdoch to be awarded a $12.1m bonus, compared with the $4.4m he took in 2010, given the magnitude of the phone-hacking scandal.