NEW YORK CITY (dpa-AFX) - International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Wednesday called on the board of directors of Sotheby's (BID) to remove James Murdoch from the company's board.
In a letter to Michael Sovern, Sotheby's Independent Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Board's Nominating Committee, Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Tom Keegel urged that James Murdoch be asked to immediately step down as a director of the company.
The letter, sent on behalf of the Teamsters Affiliates Pension Plan, a shareholder of Sotheby's, argues that recent developments in the phone-hacking scandal at News Corp (NWSA) cast doubt over Murdoch's ability to serve as an effective and credible director at Sotheby's.
Murdoch has become a central focus of numerous investigations, in the U.S. and abroad, examining the failures of judgment, oversight and accountability that allowed a five-year old hacking scandal to escalate into a full-blown corporate crisis, the letter said.
'He has arguably no experience providing critical, independent oversight, as his business experiences stem entirely from positions within News Corp, or affiliated entities. In essence, the family business,' Keegel said.
Sotheby's notorious price-fixing scandal a decade ago resulted in anti-trust convictions for former chairman Alfred Taubman and former CEO Diana Brooks and cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and settlement costs, Keegel noted in the letter.
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