Investors holding nearly a quarter of BSkyB shares failed to back the re-election of chairman James Murdoch on Tuesday, in protest over the former chief executive’s handling of a phone hacking scandal that has damaged the family name. A BSkyB spokesman said that excluding the shares controlled by News Corp, investors owning 24 percent of the company voted against his reappointment. An initial estimate put the figure at 19 percent. That does not take into account those shareholders who withheld their vote, so the final figure could be higher when it is confirmed in a regulatory filing later in the day.
“The vote is as expected but that doesn’t mean it will not have an impact. Murdoch will have to work hard to get his image back with the institutional investment community to where it was before the scandal broke,” said Sanford Bernstein analyst Claudio Aspesi.
