From cake to a wake for WiseTech founder Richard White
As the sharemarket digested the announcement of Richard White’s exit from WiseTech on Thursday afternoon, the billionaire founder ended his career with a slightly tragic send-off at the company’s HQ in Sydney’s Alexandria.
White was in the house not only to pack up his desk but to mark the 30th anniversary of his founding of the business.
More than 1000 staff gathered to watch as he stood alongside chairman Richard Dammery for a cake cutting. And they – the staff – were the first to learn of White’s decision to leave the company (made the previous evening). We hear the speeches turned emotional at times, White stopping at several turns to compose himself.
You’d think so, too, given the symmetry of the occasion and the hailstorm of publicity still battering his reputation.
Interesting as well to see White and Dammery seemingly united at this terrible moment – and no hint from either of the very bitter rift that’s been developing between them all week. YB
United exec flies in
Spotted! United Airlines executive Patrick Behrendt tooling around Brisbane in a chauffeured car.
Normally based in Chicago, it’s been a point of intrigue to see Behrendt in Queensland, although United is a Virgin Australia partner so it may be nothing more than a FIFO check-up on the relationship.
Or … does it have anything to do with Bain Capital’s ongoing (and global) search for a successor to CEO Jayne Hrdlicka? She announced her departure from Virgin in February but won’t formally turn over control until a replacement is named.
And you can bet that Behrendt’s sighting has set people talking. His CV stacks up: he’s in his fifth year at United as its director of transformation, and that follows another five years as a senior VP at Air New Zealand.
Some competition for Virgin chief customer and digital officer Paul Jones? Jones was mooted as the anointed one way back in June. YB
A lucky escape
One from the timing-is-everything file.
Former Mineral Resources investor relations boss James Bruce must be thanking his lucky stars for the timing of his decision to leave the company ahead of recent revelations about MinRes founder Chris Ellison’s tax affairs.
Bruce has just popped up as the chief operating officer of struggling miner Core Lithium – these days run by former MinRes lithium boss Paul Brown.
But he is understood to have left Ellison’s payroll towards the end of August – well ahead of any need to take calls about the MinRes founder’s tax affairs from angry shareholders.
He’d be even happier, you’d imagine, if he’d thought to offload any MinRes shares he held immediately after quitting, given they’ve tanked by about 40 per cent in the last couple of weeks.
The flip side of Bruce’s timing is that of Seven West Media’s The Nightly, which launched a glossy quarterly magazine this week, focusing on Leadership+ – a crowded market, if there ever was one.
The cover photo went to Ryan Stokes, always a good move for any of the company’s editors. But also featured on the front was an interview with Ellison. The magazine’s print deadline was clearly well ahead of any reporting on Ellison’s tax problems, because the issue wasn’t mentioned in the 1400-word piece dedicated to lauding the MinRes founder’s business achievements.
“Great leaders surround themselves with great people,” Ellison told the magazine.
That’s true, but really smart leaders might also add in a couple of people prepared to intervene when you’re about to make dodgy tax decisions. NE
No happy ending
A bitter dispute between the owners of Australia’s Sexpo convention has not, sadly, come to a happy ending, with liquidators taking control of parent company Australian Exhibition Group on Thursday.
Kennedy Ryan Advisory’s Richard Rohrt took control of the company as liquidator, after a business dispute between owners Frankie Ngo and Kevin Mack came to a head in court in September. The dispute had already forced the premature cancellation of Sexpo’s main Melbourne event in November, but it looks like the long-running event is now set for a sticky end.
Shoddy single-entendres aside, the dispute between the two men has left something of a trail of destruction this year.
The same group runs the Australian Tattoo Expo, and the dispute forced the last-minute cancellation of the Adelaide event in September – costing small exhibitors at the festival thousands in the process.
Still, it’s not all bad. The group also owns the trademarks over something called Decentracon, and a crypto currency convention, so we’ve all probably dodged a couple of bullets there. NE
Group’s lost souls
Former KPMG hotshot Jon Adgemis has made a career out of collecting unloved pubs and, it seems, a few lost souls too.
The latest to join Adgemis’s payroll is Mitch Catlin, an ex-chief of staff to former Victorian Liberal opposition leader Matthew Guy.
Catlin’s the people, culture, brand and marketing manager for Linchpin Hospitality, an entity that manages the establishments owned by Adgemis that haven’t already been repossessed by financiers (although he’s neither a director nor shareholder in Linchpin itself).
And if Catlin’s name chimes it’s because he was dumped by Guy for that shoddy business of asking a wealthy Liberal Party donor to contribute more than $100,000 to his private marketing company.
But he’s not alone in the rogue’s gallery. Also on the books for Adgemis is George Calombaris, who’s not quite persona non grata but has dangled over that ravine after losing his own hospitality business and underpaying staff by $7.83m (for which he apologised).
What followed was a cascade of misfortunes – his dumping from MasterChef Australia and the assault of a Melbourne Victory soccer supporter. In July he was abruptly let go from a consulting role with Hotel Sorrento, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, after being told his “services were no longer required”.
Catlin and Calombaris are said to be associated through rich lister Radek Sali, the former CEO of Swisse Wellness.
And we wouldn’t be surprised if Karen Martini, of Saint George, is the next to go the way of chef Guy Grossi, who’s also talking of cutting ties with Adgemis, and which – if she left – would surely spell the end of Adgemis’s Melbourne hospitality ventures. YB
More Coverage
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.