Steve Donohue, chief executive of the $9.5 billion bottle shop and pub giant Endeavour Drinks, likes to describe the company as an amalgamation of businesses built by entrepreneurial founders, including the late Dan Murphy himself and Bruce Mathieson snr, the billionaire founder of the ALH pub empire.

But if that entrepreneurial DNA has been Endeavour’s blessing in the three years since it was spun out of retail giant Woolworths, it now looms as a curse.