More changes for TSFG board

Another month and another round of changes for the board of the South Financial Group.

Directors Challis Lowe and J. W. Davis have notified South Financial that they will not stand for re-election at the company’s upcoming shareholder’s meeting.

That means no fewer than six directors that were on TSFG’s board in 2009 will have left by the time the shareholder’s meeting is over.

The past two years have been a nightmare for TSFG, which has lost more than $1.3 billion since the beginning of 2008. Its stock trades for around 90 cents a share.

Last month the company announced that Donald T. Heroman and William P. Brant had resigned from South Financial’s board. Brant had been a member of TSFG’s board since 2001, but Heroman only joined last August.

In December, noted financier Darla Moore left the board. She had joined in 2005.

Founder Mack Whittle resigned from the board last July, part of a settlement of two shareholder lawsuits over Whittle’s estimated $18 million retirement package, granted in 2008 when he stepped down as chief executive.

Of the latest two board members who will no longer be part of South Financial’s board, Davis joined in 2003 and Lowe in 2006.

According to the company’s proxy statement filed last May, the remaining board members are Lynn Harton, Dexter Hagy, Earle Russell Jr., William Timmons, David Wakefield III, William Brant, William Hummers III, Jon Pritchett, Ed Sebastian and John C.B. Smith.

Bathroom breaks and Olympic hockey

The New York Times features an interesting graph showing high-frequency data on water consumption in Edmonton, Alberta, during the men’s Olympic hockey final on Feb. 28, comparing it with the more-regular pattern seen the day before.

The Times’ Justin Wolfers suspects, probably correctly, that the spikes reflect toilets flushing in response to earlier beer consumption.