WiseTech in damage control as Richard White’s private life becomes public

Richard White founded WiseTech in 1994. Picture: Jonathan Ng

When the staff at WiseTech’s head office in the inner-city suburb of Alexandria gather to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of its founding, the mood will be a lot more constrained than they could have expected to be when it was originally planned.

When it was planned, chief executive, Richard White, who founded the company in 1994 with Brisbane-based Maree Isaacs, was expected to attend the event, which will now be more tea and biscuits than ­champagne as the damaging revelations which have emerged about his personal life, including a string of unhappy girlfriends, change the dynamics of the celebration.

The days of the outgoing White telling his rock-guitar-­repairman-to-riches stories to journalists, and outlining his bold vision for his logistics software company to eager analysts at investment banking conferences are over – at least for the time being.

Most employees have done well out of the company whose market capitalisation has gone from $1bn on its listing in 2016, to $36bn this week.

While the company’s share price has come off its recent high of just over $136 before the revelations of his court case against a former lover sparked a spate of revelations about White’s personal life, to close at $106.07 on Wednesday, the shares are still substantially higher than the $60 they were trading at a year ago.

For some shareholders, the recent share price fall is seen as a buying opportunity for the company, with investment services company CLSA upgrading the stock on Wednesday to “out perform” with a target price of $121.

WiseTech operates as a close- knit, extended-family affair.

White founded the company three decades ago with Isaacs, a former partner who has been an executive director of the company since 1996, and is now its head of licensing management.

White owns 34 per cent of the company, while long-time WiseTech director and former chairman Charles Gibbon is the second-largest shareholder with 5.12 per cent.

Gibbon is described as an independent director but has had a long association with the company, buying in as a shareholder in 2005, joining the board and becoming chair in 2006, and holding the role until September 2018.

White, who insisted last Thursday that he was not going anywhere and remained laser focused on the business, is still hoping the revelations of the past 10 days are seen as events about his private life which have nothing to do with his running of the company, and will eventually be resolved.

But the sands have shifted since then, with more revelations about former girlfriends and property purchases for them, including a $7m luxury house in Melbourne’s Docklands area for a woman, Christine Kontas, who is still a staffer in the WiseTech Melbourne office.

But there are indications that White has softened his gung-ho stance of last week and concedes he does need to work with the board, including co-operating on the outcome of an inquiry initiated by the board this week.

Chairman, corporate lawyer Richard Dammery, who was meeting with shareholders this week ahead of the annual meeting on November 22, is now in the spotlight, under pressure to convince the market that he has a succession plan for powerful 69-year-old White, who is determined to keep running the ­company.

At the least, Dammery will need to be able to assure investors there is a high-quality executive team who can take charge if White were to step back from his current role for any reason.

But Dammery, who is still insisting that the WiseTech annual meeting be an online one, will need to be more transparent as he handles the process.

Why not throw the AGM open to a hybrid face-to-face as well as an online meeting so shareholders can make their own judgment and get to ask their own questions directly and not filtered through a stage-managed online process?

How long will the review initiated by the board take, what are its parameters and its scope of reference, who are the external advisers the board has turned to for help with it, and will the report be made public?

Given that the events in question are all personal, how much can the board step in and put in controls over the chief executive’s behaviour outside the office?

Given that many of the directors have long-time connections with the company, an interesting board member to watch will be Fiona Pak-Poy, the current chair of Tyro Payments, who joined the board in February this year.

A professional non-executive director, with more than 25 years’ experience across technology, fintech, eCommerce and software as a service businesses, Pak-Poy is chair of the people and remuneration committee,

A Harvard MBA, she is a member of the powerful women’s networking group, Chief Executive Women which has strong views on the promotion of women in the workforce and at board level, and the importance of boards setting high governance standards.

That said, while the salacious details of his personal life are being lapped up and the stuff of front-page stories, the issues are about White’s private life with women who were consenting parties to the relationship.

In the case of the one woman who joined the company, White disclosed the relationship to the board when she was hired.

But his personal life has now become part of his public life and the WiseTech board are under the spotlight, with many watching to see how they handle a situation which is both sensitive and ­salacious.

It will not be an easy road ahead for some time for White, Dammery and the WiseTech staff and shareholders.