Hrdlicka to take leading role in revitalised Virgin

Bain’s $1.65bn deal to take over Virgin has raised questions over the role of former Jetstar chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka.

Former Jetstar CEO Jayne Hrdlicka is expected to be closely involved with Virgin’s future under Bain’s ownership. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Bain’s $1.65bn deal to take over Virgin has raised questions over the role of former Jetstar chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka after the private equity firm starts to take control on Wednesday.

Hrdlicka will not become CEO of the new airline but she is expected to be closely involved with its future under Bain’s ownership as a possible director and operational consultant.

While the Bain consortium has been at pains to say it will retain the current management under chief executive Paul Scurrah, some union leaders have been critical of Hrdlicka’s potential involvement on concerns that she could take a hard line on staffing issues.

Hrdlicka’s employment ties with a2 Milk, where she was chief executive, end on Tuesday, the last day of the financial year, freeing her up to focus on Virgin now Bain has emerged as the winning bidder.

Unions have had a fear that Hrdlicka’s experience running the low budget Jetstar does not auger well for her input into running Virgin, at least as far as staffing levels are concerned.

Steve Purvinas, the federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Engineers Association, has credited his union’s actions in supporting rival bidder Cyrus with the fact that Hrdlicka would not become CEO of the Bain-owned Virgin.

Mr Purvinas argued that his union’s support for Cyrus, had succeeded in getting a public commitment by Bain that Hrdlicka would not be chief executive of the airline once it took over.

“We were pleased when Bain said that Hrdlicka would not be the chief executive,” he said. “She can be a hard negotiator when it comes to dealing with unions.

“We were strongly against her as being chief executive of Virgin because of her background with Qantas. I could see her being on the board but she is not the right person to be chief executive.”

He said workers at Jetstar remembered her hard line approach when she was running that airline.

He said that if Bain went back on its promise to retain Scurrah as chief executive and put in Hrdlicka, Bain would not get co-operation from his union to change its enterprise bargaining agreement “and be constructive”.

“We are going to hold them to their word, but we are also more than happy to work with them to make their new entity profitable.”

Mr Purvinas, who represents some 350 engineers working at Virgin, also questioned Hrdlicka’s experience in running an airline. He said she had only run Jetstar for a short time and her other experience included running a2 Milk and being chair of Tennis Australia.

The daughter of a Czech migrant to the US, Hrdlicka got an MBA with the prestigious Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College before joining Bain in Boston in 1987.

She moved to Australia in 1994 to work and left Bain in 2010 to join Qantas as its group executive strategy and technology, working closely with CEO Alan Joyce.

She was appointed chief executive of Jetstar in July 2012, a role she carried out for more than five years until November 2017.

She left Qantas in April 2018 to become CEO of a2 Milk. In a surprise move, she stepped aside in December, although she is still technically employed by the company until the end of the financial year on Tuesday.

Hrdlicka has kept a low key stance in the Virgin negotiations although she has been extensively involved behind the scenes.

Bain’s spokesman for the deal has been its Australian-based managing director Miles Murphy who is a former Olympic diver.

Virgin went into administration on April 21 with debts of almost $7bn. It could emerge from administration as early as September if Bain’s deal to buy the airline is approved by a meeting of creditors in late August.