The 70,000 retail shareholders in Crown Resorts have every right to feel confused after the latest announcements by the company that James Packer will return to the board after a year away and the much-vaunted executive chairman Robert Rankin will depart. Sort of.

There isn't another ASX100 company that has done as many about-faces as Crown Resorts and these are all driven by the increasingly unpredictable Mr Packer.

Unlike most other Australian billionaires involved with public companies, James Packer doesn't have siblings, parents, children or a partner who share power. It's just him and he seems to be almost as unpredictable as Donald Trump, albeit without the stream of tweets.

Christmas cheer?

I met privately with James Packer at Crown Melbourne for an hour on Christmas Eve in 2015. It was a fascinating discussion and I mostly listened as he smoked and swore a lot.

He was super-impressive and a genuine casino visionary but also a little unhinged as he expounded forcefully on the world with bright red cheeks.

Back then, James seemed more interested in politics than business but he did regard himself as one of the big three global casino moguls with Steve Wynn, who turns 75 later this month, and 83-year-old Sheldon Adelson, the other two.

James Packer turns 50 in September but the retreat from Macau and Las Vegas announced late last year means he will now never become the undisputed global casino king when his older peers pass the baton.

Based on the spontaneous selling that James Packer tends to do, it would not surprise at all if he woke up one day and sold his entire 48.2 per cent stake in Crown Resorts, which is today valued at just over $4 billion.

If he can go from being an evangelist on the Chinese growth story to selling down his Melco Crown Entertainment stake in Macau from 38 per cent to 11.2 per cent in a couple of years, there is no reason why he wouldn't choose to sell more of his personal holding in Crown Resorts.

Family ties

Then again, it is the traditional family company and after Kerry Stokes battled him for control of media rump Consolidated Media Holdings in 2009, he did shut the proverbial back door over the next few years by lifting his personal stake in Crown from 38 per cent to a peak of 53 per cent.

Then, coinciding with a $1 billion-plus settlement with his sister Gretel, he suddenly dumped a 4.8 per cent stake raising $448 million last August. Is he a buyer or a seller? Who can tell for sure?

It can't be easy serving as one of the seven independent directors of Crown Resorts. James Packer might have quit the board in December 2015 and abandoned his plan to be a well-paid executive director, but he was still calling the shots, reportedly summoning key executives to Argentina and Aspen over the summer break to finalise his latest changes, which were then rubber-stamped by the board.

The new arrangements install the two of the longest serving Packer lieutenants at the top of the tree with John Alexander ceasing being the only "executive deputy chairman" of an ASX200 company and instead replacing Rob Rankin as executive chairman.

Former Melbourne lawyer Guy Jalland comes in as CEO of the private Packer company ACP and will also be nominated to join the Crown board, lifting total numbers to 13 when the current cap is 12. Someone will need to retire or shareholders will need to approve an increase in board size at a shareholders meeting.

Rankin remains as a director of both Crown Resorts and Melco Crown, which supports the language in Tuesday's announcement that the latest changes are amicable. Don't expect any public arguments or punch-ups as occurred between James Packer and two of his other predecessor CEOs, David Gyngell and David Leckie.

Private payment

The pay situation at Crown is also unusual. Rankin was paid privately by Packer but Crown Resorts paid John Alexander $2.62 million in 2015-16. Chief executive Rowan Craigie, a former Victorian public servant who has run the day-to-day business for 10 years, now has only one rather than two executives sitting above him.

If Packer isn't chairman himself, it would be preferable to have an independent director as chairman. All the other billionaires on ASX boards – think Frank Lowy, Gerry Harvey, Kerry Stokes and Solomon Lew – choose to be chairman so Packer returning as one of 13 directors is rare.

Being chairman would also make him more accountable for difficult situations such as the 17 Crown employees who have been languishing in Chinese jails since October.

I've been to many Crown and PBL shareholder meetings and have never seen James Packer stop and mingle with his small shareholders. He's a very private person whose outlook and mood seems to swing quite wildly at times.

After hitting a peak of more than $17 in early 2014, Crown shares have underperformed in recent years, closing down 1.2 per cent at $11.58 on Tuesday.

The huge capital program in Australia hasn't delivered and with construction under way at Barangaroo in Sydney, that is no longer a project James Packer can suddenly abandon, as he has now done twice in Las Vegas.

Unless, of course, he decided to sell out of Crown Resorts altogether. Having moved offshore, quit the board and taken up with Mariah Carey, there was a sense that James Packer was losing interest in Crown.

At least getting back on the board signals a renewed interest and hopefully the next few years can be a more stable experience for shareholders as Crown focuses on its Australian casinos and various online gambling businesses.

Stephen Mayne is an independent journalist and a director of the Australian Shareholders Association.