After meeting Blackmores chairman and majority shareholder Marcus Blackmore in May 2008, Christine Holgate was intrigued. On offer was the chance to run an expanding public company, but she had her doubts. A few confidantes, with raised eyebrows, wondered how she would be able to work with a domineering rich lister who had lived and breathed the company since he was a boy.

“I’d phoned him up and said, ‘Look, can we just park the idea of the job … because if we’re going to do this then we’re actually going to spend a lot of time together. We’re going to have to like each other,’ ” Holgate tells BOSS .