Sydney Airport CEO Kerrie Mather takes flight after 15 years

Sydney Airport chief Kerrie Mather says she will leave the company when she has shown the ropes to a new CEO.

Sydney Airport chief executive Kerrie Mather. Picture: Chris Pavlich.

They say that timing is everything and, for Sydney Airport chief executive Kerrie Mather, the looming 15th anniversary of her tenure with the company seemed like the best time to announce her departure.

“The catalyst is (that) the 2nd of April is my 15-year anniversary and it’s only a few days away. It is 15 years as the CEO of the first company, six years as the CEO of Sydney Airports, it just feels like the right time,” she told The Australian yesterday.

Ms Mather said she may not be leaving Sydney Airport for nine to 12 months because the board will carry out an international search for her replacement and she wants to be on deck to hand over.

In the meantime, there is a lot of work to do with big expansion plans for the sprawling airport, and the decision by May 8 on whether to take up the federal government’s option to develop Western Sydney Airport at ­Badgerys Creek.

“I’m going to be busy here. We have got lots to do over the next nine to 12 months. And then I plan to take a decent holiday, which is something very difficult to do when running a 24/7 business. And beyond that, maybe boards,” she said.

On Badgerys Creek, Ms ­Mather reiterated her concerns about the economics of the ­project. “We are still working through the process and we are working towards that timetable that we have agreed with the commonwealth,” she said.

“Our position has been very consistent. It is a very large greenfield project with a long lead time. It is big. There is a lot of risk ­attached to it and it represents a very challenging investment proposition for our millions of Australian super fund investors.”

She did not believe that additional revenue for the development could be obtained from changes to the curfew at Sydney airport.

“We don’t see there’ll be any change in the curfew,” she said.

Before joining Sydney Airport, Ms Mather led the team that bought Sydney Airport for $5.6 billion in 2001. She had previously worked for Macquarie Bank.

In that time the value of the group has nearly trebled to $15.1bn, and its shares have risen almost sevenfold. They closed at $6.75 yesterday, up 11c.

Ms Mather said the financial “metrics” of the business were “the strongest they have ever been”, with interest cover having doubled to 2.7 times over the past decade. Even though Sydney Airport is saddled with $8bn in debt, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has put the company on a positive outlook.

Ms Mather oversaw the listing of the then Macquarie Airports Group in 2002 and an international expansion that had it holding stakes in airports from Mexico to England, Denmark, Belgium, Italy and Japan. The global financial crisis sparked a retreat from all its international businesses and a formal divorce from Macquarie Group, which had retained a shareholding and management contract.

Ms Mather said “moving to an entity that was singularly focused on Sydney Airport has added enormous value for shareholders”.

“That has been reflected in the strong growth and value of returns delivered to shareholders,” she said.

Working with a strict regulatory environment has had its challenges, given the curfew at Sydney airport, but Ms Mather said there was still room to develop terminals to meet growing demand. The master plan has put a new terminal 4 on the agenda, which would link terminals 2 and 3.

As the female CEO for one of Australia’s biggest companies, Ms Mather has been a role model for many aspiring female executives. Half the executives in her senior management team are women, but its gender equity report shows the company is less successful at the middle to lower level. Only 40 per cent of the company’s professionals are female, compared with a national average of 53 per cent. And it has very few women in part-time positions, which indicates a lack of flexibility.

But Ms Mather said technology had enabled women to work in full-time roles in a more flexible way. She pointed to the case of a senior corporate affairs executive who had just returned to work after having her second child.