Lew has previously vowed to vote his 15.7 per cent stake against all directors up for re-election at this meeting and this will need to include Mervis whose appointment will need to be ratified by shareholders.

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Meanwhile, after conducting a search for a permanent chairman, Myer ultimately landed on the current chairman and chair of the nomination committee, JoAnne Stephenson - which suggests contenders to take this role were thin on the ground. Considering the thickness of the flak jacket required to protect the Myer chairman from the Lew assault, the dearth of candidates is no surprise.

Lew won’t conduct a second assault on Myer until later in the year or early next year when he plans to call an extraordinary general meeting at which he will nominate new directors to join the board, including representatives of his Premier group.

This will give Myer a bit more time to demonstrate the improvement is a comeback and not a one-off. This will require the all-important Christmas quarter to be a good one.

With Sydney and Melbourne both likely to open up retailing by October or November, Myer will be hoping shoppers will sprint back to stores in the lead up to Christmas - with heavy wallets.

It might also give Myer a bit of time to progress the plan to spin off its online business. While this may be little more than a thought bubble now, it is one of the options Myer is looking at to unlock value in the share price.

Myer boss JohnKing was coy about it on Thursday, saying only that it hadn’t been considered by the board. But he spent a considerable amount of time talking about the underlying value of the online business and the medium-term aspiration to almost double revenue to $1 billion.

He also referred to the “monetisation” of the department store’s loyalty program MYER one, noting Virgin Australia which unlocked value in its Velocity loyalty business.

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