Richard Harding’s purple reign still haunting icare bean counters; Cettire’s showstopper results briefing

Former icare CEO Richard Harding. Picture: Richard Dobson

Question: is there a colour you find irritating? A shade or tint so grating that you’d pay a large sum of money to smear it off your company logo?

If the answer is yes, then perhaps you might hold sympathy for Richard Harding, formerly the CEO of Insurance and Care NSW, and a corporate leader who spent some of his time allegedly mulling over a very peculiar provocation.

The offender? It happened to be Homer Simpson’s favourite colour: purple.

This obscenity was splashed all over icare’s branding, its logos, and it drove Harding absolutely bonkers.

But it also became a pivotal reason for why this bloated, overspending government agency, chaired by former NSW Labor opposition leader John Robertson, spent more than two years and upwards of $300,000 trying to overhaul its designs and signage.

Somehow, this still failed. Margin Call understands the project is still on foot, unfinished and persistently racking up costs.

As we noted last month, Harding is no longer leading icare. His stint ended prematurely in July, four months shy of the October date originally set down for his exit. We’re not saying purple, or the spending on purple, had anything to do with this … but by golly wouldn’t that be something?

Group executive Michelle Taylor was tasked with overseeing this pitiful assignment. Already it’s dragged out for more than two years and clearly cost taxpayers a bomb, mostly on market research that Taylor and Harding allegedly insisted on pursuing, as well as the engagement of fashion plates from some creative agency.

None of this should surprise anyone, either. We’re talking about icare, an organisation that spent $30,000 hiring a professional photographer to shoot headshots for its employee ID cards – that is, what workers would use to swipe themselves into the building.

Sneaky, too, that the costs of this branding palaver were split across financial years to mask total spending.

This is common in government but, to be fair, who could blame these schmucks for wanting to hide such an embarrassment.

Meanwhile, a Treasury review of icare and its “excessive spending, waste and salary costs”, as the government saw fit to term it last year, appears to have gathered steam in recent weeks.

The axe has fallen and an impending restructure will see group executive Amanda-Lea Smith absorb a slimmed down corporate affairs division, which may no longer include the aforementioned Taylor or her people from customer and strategy.

Smith, meanwhile, still apparently works from Adelaide, as does Nick Meseldzija, icare’s GM of communications. Both were hired during Covid and consequently fly-in-fly-out to Sydney, an oddity and a luxury for an organisation that’s supposed to service injured workers in NSW. And also, how will they work five days per week in the office – per a recent Minns government edict for public servants – if they live out of state?

Cettire showstopper

Talk of the town on Thursday was just how badly online luxury marketplace Cettire ran its full-year results briefing.

Too scared to field live questions, the company opted for a “webinar” in which participants were instructed to type out their questions or submit them via email. It wasn’t quite the transparency analysts were expecting, and as our Joyce Moullakis noted earlier this week, it meant CEO Dean Mintz could screen and ignore any topics he didn’t like.

Cettire CEO Dean Mintz.

Scheduled for 8.30am, events turned comical when by 8.09am there was still no sign of the company results. Ten minutes later, with observers nervously phoning each other to figure out the hold up, an announcement lobbed on the ASX website confirming the webinar had actually been postponed by two hours.

Cue an enormous, nationwide groan from everyone who’d waited for nothing. Worse, still, was that when the accounts were finally released, it turned out they weren’t even audited.

The only bright spot to all of this was when select participants (analysts and investors) were quietly informed 15 minutes ahead of the 10.30am briefing that verbal questions would now be permitted. Bizarrely, some executives kept their cameras off while answering them.

And none of it went swimmingly either. E&P analyst Julian Mulcahy was heard muttering contemptibly at the end of a question, while his microphone was left hot. “Was my question confusing or something?” he asked a colleague.

That was after he had to clarify a no-brainer on the clearance activities of online websites, which somehow left Mintz confused. “I’m not quite following,” the CEO said.

Parting gift

Is there a better signal of collective love and loyalty than the stealthy office whip-around for a dear colleague?

Ordinarily intended for those about to exit the building, scribes at the Financial Review passed a hat between them for former editor Fiona Buffini. This after witnessing her being pushed sideways into a new role managing the paper’s digital transition, among other responsibilities.

Newly appointed AFR editor-in-chief James Chessell. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nikki Short

It was a development that came on suddenly with the arrival of newly appointed editor-in-chief James Chessell, with some at the paper likening what happened to watching Bambi get shot. Cossima Marriner was announced as Buffini’s immediate replacement.

But Buffini is clearly admired, hence the outpouring of generosity from close pals and affiliates who raised upwards of several thousand dollars for a gift in recognition of her two years in the role.

One source claimed the total pool hit $4000 – enough for a flower bouquet the size of a sedan. It’s truly a stupendous amount, extraordinary really, the equivalent to what some of the Fin’s very special journalists spend on lunch … every couple of weeks.