David Jones department store: corporate governance and management structure

David Jones a Welsh immigrant, founded this departmental store in 1838 in Australia. With a vision to trade in the best and most exclusive goods as well as stocking goods tha embraces everyday wants of mankind at large, his store performed well. This store was located along the main street of Sydney and attracted both gentry and country settlers. They purchased goods such as buckskins, ginghams, fabrics, silk and other goods. David Jones later retired and handed the running of the store to his partners. This move was unsuccessful as the store underperformed with his exit. He came back from retirement borrowed heavily and recreated the stores success. At present David Jones is the oldest department store in Australia as well as in the world still in business using the original trade name (David Jones, 2012).

Management structure

The board of directors as at March 2012 comprised 8 members under the chairmanship Robert Savage AM, a non-executive director, assisted by John Coates AC, as deputy chairman and non-executive director as well. The other members of the board are; Paul Zahra the chief executive officer, Stephen Goddard who serves as the finance director. The rest of the members including, John Harvey Katie Lahey, Peter Mason AM and Philippa Stone are all non-executive directors. Three of the board member serve in other committees in the organization. These include, Robert Savage AM who is an ex-officio member of the Audit Committee, John Coates AC who is the chairman of the Property Committee and John Harvey who serves as the chair of the Audit Committee.

The senior management staff are; Paul Zahra as the Chief Executive officer, Stephen Goddard the Finance Director, Paula Bauchinger who is the Group Executive Human Resource and Cate Daniels, Group Executive in charge of Operations. Others in the management include, Matthew Durbin, Group Executive in charge of Financial Services, Antony Karp, Group Executive in charge of Retail Services, Sacha Laing, Group Executive in charge of Fashion and Beauty, Brett Riddington Group Executive in charge of marketing, Patrick Robinson, Group Executive in charge of Home and Food and David Robinson, Executive in charge of Omni Channel Strategy and Integration.

Corporate Governance

The Board of Directors has a major responsibility of protecting and advancing shareholder interests in ways that reflect the Company's responsibilities in order to satisfy the shareholders needs. The Boards is endowed with the responsibility to keep up the highest standards of corporate governance across the David Jones Consolidated Entity (DJCD). The Board realises that corporate governance is based on values and behaviors that strengthen the Company's daily operations, values that guarantees transparency, risk management accountability, creation of value protection of stakeholders interests and fair dealing. In tandem with this belief, the basic approach is to look at corporate governance within the wider framework of corporate responsibility. The Board of David Jones has adopted practices governed by the Company's Corporate Statement that makes sure it remains in the frontline in protection of stakeholder interests.

Exec Compensation

The Chief Executive Officer receives an yearly basic remueration of $960,000. This is subject to yearly review by the Board and includes the employment cost. The current executive director, does not get directors fee.

Risk Management and Hedging Policy Analysis

In this company the risk management is a continuos process and an integral part of business management and corporate supremacy. It is designed within the corporate strategy to guarantee that it advances David Jones' corporate goals and objectives.

The David Jones risk management program has been structured to establish a sound system of future risk and management and internal controls by having the structure in place to make known, assess, monitor and be in charge of risk. The company's risk management methodology has been developed to comply with the Australia Risk Management Standard (AS/NZ, 4060).

David Jones Board establishes the company's risk appetite or acceptance of risk, after taking into consideration the company's strategic objectives and other features including shareholder expectations, financial and capital requirements and the company's financial position, organizational ethnicity and the company's experience or demonstrated capability in administering risk.

The Board is accountable for ensuring material risks facing the company have been identified and that appropriate and adequate controls are in place. The management is required to scrutinize the business risk in the context of Board expectations, specific business underlying principles and the organization's risk appetite.

Being that risk can be realized both through threats to the operation, and the failure to take advantage of opportunities. David Jones takes an enterprise wide view of risk with risks from all activities, strategic and operational, being examined.

The annual risk profile is used as a basis for the Company's Internal Audit program, which in turn purports the company's external audit program. Administration tracks and reports to the Board on execution of any high priority matters identified through the Internal and External Audit process, throughout the business, on a regular basis.

The prescribed risk report, internal and external audit utility and scrutinizing of audit factors are all subject to future notice of the Board Audit Committee that takes the report to the full Board which has responsibility for the entire risk management.