Chemist clash heading to court; Postal departure by mutual agreement
Pharma couple and oddball rich-listers Cathie Reid and Stuart Giles will soon be in court defending a lawsuit brought against them by Icon Group, the company they co-founded in 2012 and sold off in pieces to private equity.
It’s a case layered in claim and counterclaim, with both sides alleging they were short-changed by the other. The particulars are sleep-inducing and tranquillising and for everyone’s sake it’s just better to skip over the inanity and fine detail.
What’s important, however, is that Reid is still technically the proprietor of a handful of pharmacies in NSW and Queensland, and for better or worse these are run by the very people suing her at Icon Group. It’s their job, in part, to manage staff and keep them paid.
And here’s where it gets messy. Reid, as proprietor, pays Icon to run the pharmacies and distribute the salaries, but it’s claimed that she and Giles ceased paying staff in August, jeopardising wages at three sites in NSW and four facilities in Queensland.
Icon, good-hearted corporate citizen that it is, says it’s been absorbing the costs and paying out salaries anyway, and continues to do so, to the tune of $4m – if only to ensure none of the workers are left needlessly out of pocket. Many of them don’t have a clue that any of this has transpired.
“Had Icon not continued to pay staff, they would have been left unpaid by Cathie Reid and Stuart Giles,” an Icon spokesman said. “(They) have refused to pay staff wages for their pharmacies from July 2023 until today despite repeated requests from Icon Group.”
Reid, fresh off a jet from the Super Bowl, doesn’t dispute that Icon is paid to manage those pharmacies. The issue, she said, was that her venues had “significantly overpaid” for its back-office services – more than $10m by her estimate – and had “for two years sought fee reviews” that keep getting refused.
Icon tells us those service fees, and the legal dispute surrounding them, are totally unrelated to the allegations being levelled over the wages, and that Reid is conflating two unconnected matters – maybe deliberately.
Reid, meanwhile, is adamant that she’s never done anything to imperil salaries. It would be a terrible look, too, if true, given the sheer luxury routinely displayed on her Instagram account.
“Any suggestion that Stuart or I would fail to pay staff is scurrilous, and would be a transparent attempt to embarrass Stuart and I without regard to the harm and fear that may be caused to staff who should not be impacted by the legal dispute,” she said.
Best of luck to the judge tasked with making sense of this tangle, although Reid, it appears, is open to “sensibly resolve” the dispute. One suspects the time for that may have already passed.
Agree to separate
More mail on the exodus – or “sexodus” – of female leaders at Australia Post, a controversy that headlined Margin Call on Tuesday and focused attention the organisation’s flagrantly lopsided executive team, stacked as it is with men.
Not always the case, as we pointed out. In 2022 there was equal representation: four women, four fellas, a very healthy 50-50 split. The departures began last year, culminating with just one woman left at the table. Of the three who’ve gone, two have already been replaced with men; this from an organisation furiously attempting to convince the world that it can modernise itself.
Not as well known, however, is that one of those recent departures, the trusted corporate lieutenant Tanny Mangos, walked away by mutual agreement after a series of chats with CEO Paul Graham. Mangos sat on the executive for more than two years as the EGM for corporate affairs, having been brought over from Bank of Queensland.
Until January, that is, when she returned from the summer break and participated in a number of conversations that didn’t sound so swell, resigning with “immediate effect”, as Graham told the workforce in an email.
“I wanted to share the news that Tanny Mangos has left Australia Post,” he wrote on January 18. “I have been speaking to Tanny for some time and we have mutually agreed that she will leave the business with immediate effect. I want to acknowledge the contributions Tanny has made to Australia Post and wish her well in her future endeavours.”
Mangos’s explanation on LinkedIn pointed to the “health and the wellbeing” of her family as the reason for her abrupt departure, but also the desire for a much-needed break “before embarking on my next career move”. She told Margin Call that Graham was aware of these issues and “agreed for me to resign with immediate effect”.
But personal matters, we’re told, were not the only topic being discussed. In any case, Mangos wished the CEO extremely well on her departure, publicly thanking him as a “transformative and fearless leader”.
Meeting of minds
Expatriate Australian retail billionaire Brett Blundy was back in his hometown of Melbourne on Tuesday, spied breaking bread at a working lunch with his new executive recruit Mark McInnes.
The former Premier Retail chief, who left the employ of Blundy’s billionaire peer Solomon Lew two years ago and has been on paid gardening leave ever since, is set to begin at Blundy’s BBRC empire based in Melbourne on February 26.
Blundy, 64, who long ago eschewed the shores of Oz in favour of Monaco, had along five of his execs for lunch with McInnes at low-key restaurant La Manna and Sons. All seemed relaxed and comfortable as the afternoon unfolded.
McInnes joins Blundy’s investment firm in the newly created role of global chief executive of retail and consumer. McInnes was in Monaco with Blundy earlier this year as his appointment was announced.
Blundy is also in the southern capital to do the rounds of the retail brands he owns, which will now be overseen by McInnes, formerly CEO of David Jones.
BBRC brands include listed junk jewellery chain Lovisa, which Blundy chairs, as well as the listed Accent Group, whose brands include Glue Store, Athletes Foot and Platypus among others.
Off topic for the gathering might have been Blundy and McInnes’s recent traversing of the market for multimillion-dollar real estate.
The billionaire has just moved from one luxury apartment in Monaco to another, while McInnes, along with his wife Lisa, has just listed his family’s home in Melbourne’s Toorak. The couple, who in December paid off their mortgage to ANZ, are seeking $21m for their Stonnington Ave home.
Just before Christmas they signed on the line to pay $36m for another mansion in the same affluent suburb. The McInnes’s new home, Dunraven, is on prestigious Clendon Rd, directly opposite the Myer family’s estate and up the road from Paul Little and Jane Hansen’s historic pile “Coonac”.
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