Last drinks for another exec in Treasury Wine exodus

Treasury Wine Estates, owner of the Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Wynns brands, has lost another key executive.

Incoming Treasury Wine Estates managing director and chief executive Tim Ford. Picture: Rachael Dere

Treasury Wine Estates, owner of the Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Wynns brands, has lost another key executive with the unexplained departure of its highly regarded boss of Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The recent churn in executives at Treasury Wine has included at least four heads of its troubled Americas arm, four chief financial officers and two chief marketing officers.

It comes as chief executive ­Michael Clarke prepares to step down at the end of the month, amid nascent plans to demerge its valuable Penfolds division.

Tim Ford will take over the reins of the $7.6bn winemaker at a time when its share price has slumped by almost 50 per cent since its peak last year.

Treasury Wine Estates is fighting to turn around its embattled Americas business and faces challenges in key markets such as China and Australia as the coronavirus pandemic impacts wine sales.

Mr Ford, currently chief operating officer, will walk into the chief executive’s office on July 1 without the help of a key member of his executive leadership team, Ash Peck, who has also served as the winemaker’s head of global business services.

He initially joined Treasury Wine in 2013 from AusNet Services after earlier working at Cadbury to become the winemaker’s chief information officer but was quickly identified as a strong manager and promoted to a hands-on operations role in crucial sales regions.

 

Mr Peck was responsible for regions that drive more than 10 per cent of Treasury Wine’s annual revenue and pre-tax earnings, but the ASX-listed wine group decided not to announce his departure.

The reasons are for his resignation are unclear. The latest departure might raise concerns among analysts at a time when Treasury Wine is just three weeks from shifting to a new CEO and has a number of challenges before it.

In the past few years Treasury Wine has suffered from an unusually high turnover of senior executives for a top publicly listed company, including four chief financial officers.

In 2018 its long-serving marketing boss Simon Marton quit after 20 years with the beverages giant.

His replacement as chief marketing officer, Michelle Terry, a rising star within Treasury Wine, only lasted a year in the role and left in 2019.

Treasury Wine’s Americas arm has also been a graveyard for careers with the recent departures of executives including Victoria Snyder, Gunther Burghardt (now CFO at vitamin company Blackmores) and Angus McPherson, who lasted seven months as president of the Americas and global sales.

In 2019, Peter Dixon, managing director of Asia and global travel, walked away from his role leading Treasury Wine’s most important division to join rival winemaker Accolade Wines.

His exit came a few months after the loss of Robert Foye, Treasury Wine’s then chief operating officer, and considered by many as heir apparent to Mr Clarke, who was forced to resign for a “breach of internal policies”.

The reasons behind Mr Foye’s departure were never fully explained.

In April, Treasury Wine announced that following a strategic review it would consider a demerger of its luxury wine business Penfolds into a separate company that would be listed on the ASX. This would leave incoming CEO Mr Ford with a large rump of commercial wines.