Myer unveils its target customer: a woman called Eva

Cartoon: Peter Nicholson.

The “New Myer” led by ex-Aussie Post exec Richard Umbers spent millions analysing data to be able to tell the market yesterday that the beleaguered department store group’s most valuable customer is a 30-something woman named Eva.

Eva, which means “life” (at least that’s what Umbers is hoping), is fashionable, successful, works out, values her family and enjoys celebrating her purchases with a glass of bubbles.

No one at Margin Call fits that bill — and guess what, neither does anyone else in Umber’s shiny “New Myer” executive team.

In a stunning, contemporary display of gender diversity at a retailer, the new boss’s featured top eight are all blokes, except for the “New Myer” people, risk and safety chief Louise Tebbutt, who’s smiling in her publicity shot but must every now and then wish someone like “Eva” was also on the executive table.

Perhaps Umbers and his fellow Myer directors including chair Paul McClintock should have popped their heads into Mural Hall at their flagship Melbourne store yesterday to hear CSL and Medibank director Christine O’Reilly discuss what happens when female execs find themselves without gender peers where they work.

Eventually, they leave. Maybe, just like Eva.

Family values

On the lunchtime business panel with O’Reilly was fellow company director Sir Rod Eddington, who had nothing but praise for his chair and friend Rupert Murdoch.

“Rupert is Australia’s most successful business leader of all time,” the 21st Century Fox lead director Sir Rod gushed.

“The important thing about Rupert is although he is in his mid-80s he is going on 21. He doesn’t spend much time looking in the rear-view mirror.”

Sir Rod reckoned that when it came to succession planning at the media empire it wasn’t inevitable that Rupert’s sons, ­co-executive chairman Lachlan and chief executive James, would emerge running the company.

“They have earned their place at the top table,” Eddington told fellow panellist and Westpac chair Lindsay Maxsted and an audience that included NBN executive chair Ziggy Switkowski and Bunnings boss John Gillam.

“These companies wouldn’t be successful if it was all about the family,” Sir Rod said.

Moving house

But the wheels of change are turning more slowly for less globally-focused media scion John B Fairfax as he seeks to offload his family’s Point Piper estate Elaine, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, with lofty hopes for a $100 million sale of the historic Sydney Harbour-front holding.

Publisher JB lodged a series of planning applications with Woollahra Council more than three months ago seeking to carve up the redundant New South Head Road estate into four separate dwellings, as well as upgrade the existing home, which the media family has owned since 1891.

But as Woollahra councillor and now boss of Neil Balnaves’ Ardent Leisure Deborah Thomas knows, good bureaucracy (like a good share price) takes time, which has seen the Ken Jacob’s-led sale of the iconic estate effectively grind to a halt.

So far the three-part application made in the name of JB’s corporate vehicle Marinya Capital has been referred to heritage, roads and maritime, engineering, trees and lands, park management, health and urban design experts among myriad others for review and response.

But it is yet to even get before a council development committee.

The idle Elaine was first put on the market by Fairfax almost a year and a half ago and JB’s preference remains for the holding to be sold as one lot.

Banker’s apology

ANZ’s mum-and-dad customer base would have loved seeing their Collins Street bank boss Mike Smith donning his agribusiness shirt and heading to outback Queensland for a bit of personal banking with an aggrieved former Landmark and now ANZ customer.

Looking like a flushed fish out of water, sipping billy tea from a cast iron mug instead of claret from a Riedel, Smith took to tabloid TV to apologise for his bank’s treatment of former Landmark borrowers.

It was a showy gesture from London-born Smith, who has said he will soon leave the bank. ANZ believes any losses could amount to only $13 million.

That’s small change given ANZ’s first-half profit of $3.7 billion, and Smith was paid $10.4m last year.

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