AusPost execs follow Christine Holgate out the door
The scintillating personality and evident charisma of interim Aussie Post chief Rodney Boys and his chair Lucio Di Bartolomeo – on show over recent months at Senate estimates – has apparently been insufficient to prevent a mass exodus of executives from the troubled national postal service.
Recent weeks have seen the exit of at least eight of Post’s most senior executives in favour of greener pastures, with at least two high-flyers leaving to join former Post boss Christine Holgate at her new employer Global Express.
Out the door shortly to join what will be the Allegro-controlled transport and logistics group is Post’s manager of mail services Michael Oates, who finished up with the troubled government business enterprise last week after five years at the national letter carrier.
Also believed to be joining Holgate at her new gig is Vicki Ballantyne, who was executive assistant to Holgate and then Boys in the office of the CEO. She is understood to have finished up at Post on Wednesday.
Ballantyne and Oates’ exit and that of other senior colleagues decimates the ranks of management ahead of the arrival of new Post bossPaul Graham, who is set to join in September but for now remains in his role as the Sydney-based chief supply officer at Woolworths.
Margin Call understands that the rash of departures follows the payment of executive bonuses for the 2021 financial year, which ended on June 30.
Also out the door in favour of a new role at a large corporate is John Cox, who was Post’s executive general manager of transformation and enablement and before that chief information officer. Cox is leaving to join Steven Cain at Coles as his chief technology officer.
Almost 10-year Post veteran Claire Burke, most recently general manager of customer solutions and partnerships, is leaving to join a multinational tech company.
Post’s general manager of property Michelle McNally is leaving in favour of returning to her former employer ISPT Super Property, while Boys’ chief risk officer Claire Hamilton is going to a similar role at AGL.
Margin Call notes that Hamilton joins former Post chief customer officer Christine Corbett, who left to join the energy company also as chief customer officer a couple of years ago and is set to spearhead its demerged renewable energy entity.
Also out is Neil Farbridge-Currie, a 10-year Post finance exec veteran, who finished a couple of weeks ago.
The departures set the scene for a busy period of likely recruitment for new boss Graham, who will be paid a $1.45m base salary with the potential to earn as much again in bonuses.
Margin Call understands Graham remains in discussions with his chair Di Bartolomeo as to where he will officially live, although clearly the new boss will have plenty of spare offices to choose from.
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Party poopers
Won’t somebody please think of the parties?
Just when Melbourne thought it was safe to go ahead and dust off their frocks, Dan Andrews has imposed the state’s fifth lockdown, pouring cold water on all manner of celebrations across the state.
Take for example Latitude boss and former AusPost chief Ahmed Fahour, who with new-ish wife Hannah had planned to finally celebrate their nuptials with friends after restrictions forced them to pare back their official ceremony in February.
Recall it was just their immediate family called upon to throw rice for the couple at their intimate ceremony during the state’s third lockdown.
All these months later and it is Andrews again who has foiled the couple’s grand plans to gather with friends over lunch in Melbourne to toast the matrimony, which comes just weeks after Fahour secured a buyer for his Hawthorn mega-mansion.
Guess they’ll just have to find another avenue to splurge the $40.5m in sale proceeds.
Only hours before the official word was given from the Premier, Fahour had taken to Twitter to express his relief at no new local cases for the state, paving the way for his party to proceed as planned: “Phew! Fingers crossed Victoria … thinking of you Sydney and hoping for better days.”
If anyone’s finger crossing was capable of pulling the strings, surely Treasurer Josh Frydenberg would be a top contender, his 50th birthday party now off the cards too as restrictions come into effect from midnight Thursday.
Phew! Fingers crossed Victoria and let’s keeping practicing great hygiene and getting vaccination accelerated. Thinking of you sydney and hoping for better days pic.twitter.com/I4YifDJzv6
— Ahmed Fahour (@afahour) July 14, 2021
Celebrating with his largely NSW-dwelling ratpack of Ryan Stokes, James Symond and Justin Hemmes was already largely off the cards given NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s lockdown, though Margin Call does hear there had been a party of sorts planned by the coast in Lorne: one of Hemmes’ recent purchases, the $38m Lorne Hotel, perhaps a good spot to blow the froth of a few.
Instead, it is looking like a more low-key do is on the cards, just with wife Aimie and kids Blake and Gemma.
Good thing his birthday present came early, a decade low jobless rate at 4.9 per cent. Even better than the big 5-0.
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Joyce’s choice
Margin Call told you Wednesday of Barnaby Joyce’snew-look office, including senior adviser Mick Keelty and chief of staff Jake Smith, but it seems there was one key stakeholder that missed the memo.
None other than PM Scott Morrison that is, whose office on Thursday sent out its updated list of ministry media contacts.
There alongside a rundown of email and phone number details for the advisers to the likes of Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, Attorney-General Michaelia Cash, all the way through to Assistant Minister for Forestry Jonathon Duniam, was a gaping hole next to the returned deputy PM, also Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development.
According to the list, the Nationals leader has no contact named, and is best reached through a parliament house landline and a generic email address. Those media teams really have their work cut out.
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