Myer drags its feet in chair chase
More than four months after Garry Hounsell caved to investor pressure and made for the exit at Myer, there’s still no word on his replacement at the department store operator.
Recall it was just prior to the group’s AGM in October that dissident major shareholders Geoff Wilson and Premier Investments’ Solomon Lew mounted a campaign (not their first) to oust the board entirely.
And while they only partially succeeded — pushing Hounsell off his perch, along with directors Lyndsey Cattermole and Julie Ann Morrison — it seems Myer is yet to recognise the pulling power of the billionaire duo.
Margin Call hears that communication lines between acting chair JoAnne Stephenson and both major players Lew and Wilson are virtually non-existent, despite their key role in creating the recruitment conundrum in the first place.
Alongside the reporting of a 13 per cent slide in sales for the half year on Thursday, Stephenson, who also sits on the board of Challenger, Asaleo Care and Japara, told shareholders her board had so far undertaken a thorough search.
“The search process is progressing well, with advanced discussions under way with preferred candidates,” she said.
“Relevant retail skills have been a priority in the search. We will update the market as soon as it is appropriate to do so.”
The former KPMG adviser had previously noted she was looking globally, with any international hire probably pushing out the timeline for the feet-on-the-ground start date.
Perhaps it is finding candidates in the first place that’s been the problem — it’s not like Myer can offer rivers of gold or much appeal more generally to lure any chairman.
The latest accounts do show profit up by 8.4 per cent, but director fees took a hefty hit pre-pandemic (the third cut in three years), with a pledge to remain at reduced rates for at least two years.
Any incoming chairman receives a base fee of $250,000 — down from $300,000 last year.
With a slimline board of only four, including chief John King alongside Dave Whittle and Jacquie Naylor, it is unlikely that robust debate is causing the holdup.
King was more focused on the group’s online growth at the results briefing on Thursday, though analysts were quick to point out that the group had seemingly missed out on the retail boom presenting itself to many of the other key retailers.
“Myer is one of the few retailers to not benefit from an industry-wide reduction in promotions, with gross margins declining by 55 basis points … Myer did not see the same degree of sales transfer to online from closed stores,” Citi retail analysts Bryan Raymond and Craig Woolford wrote.
Perhaps King’s strategy to cancel stock deliveries at the peak of the pandemic wasn’t quite so wise after all.
Holy cow!
So Defence Minister (on rest due to health advice) Linda Reynolds has called her former staffer and alleged Parliament House rape victim Brittany Higgins a “lying cow”.
What a class act.
Her boss and the nation’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the comments were “inappropriate and wrong”, but with the caveat that they were made in a private place, that Reynolds apologised to staff who heard the comments and that the comments were made amid an incredibly stressful unfolding situation in the minister’s office.
He’s clearly not had time to talk to Jenny.
“I have never questioned Ms Higgins’ account of her alleged sexual assault and have always sought to respect her agency in this matter,” Reynolds said in a statement, adding that the comments were about news reports “regarding surrounding circumstances that I felt had been misrepresented”.
Regardless, it’s not really the sort of nomenclature we’d expect from a self-described “passionate advocate for … and supporter of … gender equality” as the minister describes herself as in her biography on her political website.
“Senator Reynolds is a passionate champion for gender equality and female empowerment in politics and in society more generally,” her website goes on.
In her maiden speech to the Senate in 2014, Reynolds said her former role as a member of the Chief of Army’s advisory committee on gender diversity had left her admiring “the leadership and honesty it took to identify and start addressing previously unrecognised unconscious bias and barriers to women”.
“These biases and barriers are now obvious to me in politics and in many other professions,” she said.
“I strongly believe that now is the time to evolve and mature our national approach and narrative on gender. I will be a very active participant in this important change process.”
Whether her actions could be referred to as the right kind of change is another matter.
The minister is also a member of the National Council of Women and, in an address in late 2018 to a Women in National Security event, said her experience in the military informed her belief “that sometimes you need to rebalance the playing field to realise true equality of opportunity”.
“Now is the time to evolve and mature our national approach and narrative on gender … toward one of empowerment and confidence,” she said. Neither ScoMo nor Reynolds in their reactions to the revelation of the “lying cow” comment thought it necessary to apologise to Higgins, instead merely providing context for its use.
But the context still doesn’t make it OK.
Higgins on Thursday night was threatening defamation action against Reynolds unless she publicly apologised for the comment.
Another day in the Canberra bubble.
Scott Morrison says Defence Minister Linda Reynolds deeply regrets her "offensive remarks" in which she called Brittany Higgins a "lying cow". "She has already spoken to her staff and apologised for those comments," he says.
— Olivia Caisley (@livcaisley) March 4, 2021
Rising to occasion
Pay rises and promotions usually come hand-in-hand — but not if you ask NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Grilled before the state’s budget estimates on Thursday, the pin-up girl for COVID-19 response was adamant that there had been no pay rises dolled out to her ministers while public sector wages were frozen … but that didn’t include internal promotions.
Pressed by Abigail Boyd of The Greens, Berejiklian defended her minister for finance and small business Damien Tudehope and his promotion to senior minister during the pandemic.
It was Tudehope that stepped up to fill the role of Arts Minister after Don Harwin took leave for an alleged breach of COVID-19 restrictions in April, but Berejiklian said any raise he received after Harwin’s reinstatement was merely coincidental.
Of the appointment of more parliamentary secretaries during her time than in any government previously, Berejiklian answered: “Can we say we make them work for every dollar.”
Add all that to her artful obfuscation of questions of her relationship with Wagga’s own Daryl Maguire, or “pork-barrelling” claims, and perhaps its Berejiklian who should be asking for the raise.