The FPA airs its dirty laundry as Mark Rantall appointed CEO

The appointment of Mark Rantall as the new FPA chief executive comes amid revelations of disagreements in the boardroom.

The new chief executive of the Financial Planning Association (FPA), Mark Rantall, will assume office in just over a fortnight’s time — on 1 July. The FPA will therefore have been without a chief executive for the best part of three months — a period spanning the handing down of the Federal Budget, the Future of Financial Advice reforms and the release of the Henry Review into Taxation.

In short, notwithstanding day-to-day administration being in the steady and experienced hands of deputy chief executive Deen Sanders, the FPA has been without a discernible figurehead through a crucial period of debate and policy formulation.

Now, just weeks out from Rantall finally taking the helm, the FPA has been subject to the unedifying spectacle of the public airing of supposed boardroom disagreements, including around the selection of Rantall himself.

The catalyst for the public airing of the boardroom disagreements was the resignation of a FPA director, Matrix Financial Planning’s Rob Pederson, who then used the same public relations representative employed by the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) to disseminate a statement outlining his reasons for resigning.

Only Pederson and the other members of the FPA board can know what really happened and the context in which it occurred, but as a member of the board of Matrix, Pederson would have understood his obligations as a company director as spelled out in the Corporations Act and related regulations.

He would have been well aware of his obligation to exercise ‘active discretion’ and to notify his fellow directors of any concerns he may have held.

The FPA’s chairperson, Julie Berry, at the same time as defending the FPA board process, claimed that Pederson, in tendering his letter of resignation, expressed none of the concerns attributed to him in the statement issued by the public relations representative.

Notwithstanding Pederson’s failure to make clear his concerns, it would seem both inappropriate and irregular if Rantall was appointed chief executive in circumstances where the full board was not given an opportunity to measure his suitability against that of other candidates before casting a vote in full formal session.

While it is all very well to place the selection of a candidate in the hands of a sub-committee and for that sub-committee to use the services of a head hunter, the importance of the chief executive’s role dictates that the ultimate appointee must have been the choice of a majority of the full board.

Significantly, Pederson has said he has no particular issue with Rantall’s ultimate suitability. It will be left to the members of the FPA to make their own judgements on arguments around the process.