Bubs chair has form for upheaval as Cranbrook school knows well

New Bubs chair Katrina Rathie wanted to be the big cheese at Cranbrook, too.

Katrina Rathie hasn’t wasted much time giving the board of Bubs Australia a tune-up since her appointment as its chair in April.

This week the company announced the sudden firing of its chief executive and co-founder, Kristy Carr, accusing her of a failure to comply with “reasonable board directions”.

Also fired was Carr’s mentor and Rathie’s immediate predecessor, Dennis Lin, who was forcibly retired in April over a “deterioration in Bubs’ financial performance”.

Rathie joined the Bubs board barely two years ago as a non-executive director, and one can assume that she’s ascended with the support of Steven Lin, managing partner at C2 Capital. The Hong Kong-based fund is Bubs’ largest shareholder with more than 10 per cent ownership. Lin is its appointed nominee and, put simply, Rathie would be nowhere without his support.

Back to that in a moment. The very sudden destabilisation of Bubs may have come as a jolt, but Rathie was involved in a similar crisis in the past. Her name should chime with anyone who remembers the very public furore that engulfed Sydney’s Cranbrook School council over the past 12 months.

Rathie was central to that saga. For those foggy of memory, it evolved out of a deteriorating relationship between Cranbrook’s headmaster, Nicholas Sampson, and the school’s former president, Jon North – the issue at hand being a shift to co-ed learning at the all-boys school.

Rathie made it clear at the time that she was supporting Sampson in a trusted advisory capacity.

Cranbrook school headmaster Nicholas Sampson.

Cranbrook’s former council president, Jon North.

Not as well known is that Rathie harboured her own ambitions to be appointed Cranbrook School president. She’d had a tilt at the job in September 2020 but lost to North on that occasion.

That was after she’d allegedly been promised the gig by the outgoing president at the time, Roger Massey-Greene, and after Sampson had tried to help Rathie by shoring up support with several council members. Evidently, that only went so far.

Her ambitions don’t appear to have entirely subsided, either.

When the school board finally dissolved last year in a mass resignation, Rathie, the only member who didn’t resign, attempted a second lunge for the vacant presidency spot. That, too, was unsuccessful, with Geoff Lovell, a nominee of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, receiving the appointment instead.

Weirdly, Massey-Greene was one of two people who headed up the selection committee.

It’s a circumstantial case that Rathie worked with Sampson to unseat a hostile president with the backing of the school’s impeccably connected and wealthy donor community, people like Will Vicars, Warwick Negus, Angus Dawson and Nicola Wakefield Evans, all of whom were supportive of the co-ed learning concept and worked with Rathie to have it brought to effect. North had been criticised as a drag on those discussions.

Incidentally, it seems the corporate adviser who assisted that campaign is now working on the Bubs account since Rathie’s appointment. Small world, eh?

It should surprise no one that the clever and ambitious Rathie has not only become the chair of the Bubs board, but that she’s also seen off her predecessor and a co-founder in what looks to be another destabilisation ploy.

Given the company’s financial position and falling share price, it shouldn’t take a genius to wonder if it might find itself being placed into voluntary administration at some point, only to be miraculously salvaged by the shining knights at C2 Capital, if they so wanted.

The alternative, of course – if the contracts are valuable – is for C2 to just lob a bid for Bubs and take control of the damn thing.

Candy from a baby and all that.

Fancy footwork

Who’s to say what the future holds for investment bank Jarden and its beleaguered Australian operations? The bank reported a loss of $37m for the year to March 31 and its local arm has been busy trying to discreetly slim down its headcount.

Its New Zealand parent has injected enough capital to keep the bonuses flowing for management, and yet still close to a dozen members of its Australian flock have been let go from its equities and investment banking divisions in recent weeks.

Maybe it’s too early to speculate on whether the local outpost survives long term, but Aidan Allen, Jarden Australia’s co-CEO, shouldn’t be overly concerned.

Not that he ever is – remember, it was Allen who told the Financial Review in March 2021 that “there’s never been a better time to be in investment banking”, and yet here we are barely 24 months later and the deal-making landscape is a veritable Gobi.

Jarden co-chief executive Aidan Allen in a former life as a ballroom dancer.

Should the worst occur, Margin Call has unearthed footage of Allen from 1996 during his heyday as a competitive ballroom dancer.

“Aidan is self-employed making dance shirts, collars and everything else, including shoes,” said the announcer at the 1996 Australian Adult Open Modern Final. Spectators were then treated to Allen’s display of a slow foxtrot.

It’ll take more than fancy footwork to save Jarden Australia, but at least Allen has something to fall back on, if it comes to that.