Billionaire Bruce Mathieson lashes out at Endeavour Group ‘disaster’ as pub civil war reignites

Bruce Mathieson says the pubs and bottle shop empire’s management is taking too long to arrest declining sales and the CEO was ‘not good enough and should never have been there’.

Billionaire pubs, pokies baron Bruce Mathieson has lashed out at Endeavour Group management. Picture: Glenn Hampson

Billionaire Bruce Mathieson has lashed out at the board and management of embattled pubs and bottle shops giant Endeavour Group, describing its performance as “disaster” and that its leaders were moving too slowly to arrest declining sales.

In a return to the bruising civil war between Mr Mathieson and Endeavour leadership, the billionaire pubs baron – Endeavour’s biggest shareholder – said outgoing chief executive Steve Donohue was “not good enough and should never have been there”.

Mr Mathieson’s outburst came after Endeavour issued a profit warning earlier this week and held its annual general meeting on Wednesday, at which a large protest vote against the awarding of long-term incentive granting of shares to the CEO was lodged.

About 25.7 per cent of votes were cast against the approval of rights over 561,428 Endeavour shares to Mr Donohue, who about six weeks ago announced he would step down from the role by September 27, 2025. A replacement is yet to be named.

It is likely the Mathieson camp, which holds a 15 per cent stake in Endeavour, voted against the LTI package for Mr Donohue. In comparison, the overall remuneration report sailed through with 98.4 per cent of votes cast in favour.

Endeavour Group chief executive Steve Donohue has come under fire.

Mr Mathieson told The Australian that Endeavour’s performance had been “a disaster and the share price proves that” and that he hoped the board under chairman Ari Mervis, in the role since March, “gets on with the job and cuts the costs out of it and gets it running the way it should be running”.

“I still think it is one of the wonderful businesses in Australia, Everything is there. It is just the people who have to change. There is not one negative other than the people running it,” Mr Mathieson said, citing a lack of pub experience in the management ranks.

“It has good properties and is in the right locations. We should be thriving. We always have as a family business done well in tough [economic] times, and this should be no different.

“The business is a wonderful business and can be turned around quickly if you put the right people in place.”

Bruce Mathieson has been suffering from a rare form of blood cancer. Picture Glenn Hampson

Shares in Endeavour, the nation’s largest owner of bottle shops and pubs, had sunk to a fresh all-time low on Monday when it warned of slowing sales and issued a profit warning for the first half of 2025 as consumers pull back their spending on beer, wine and spirits.

The shares have fallen again since to be down almost 10 per cent for the week, including a near 5c drop to $4.30 on Wednesday.

Endeavour was spun out of Woolworths in mid-2021, with the supermarket giant combining its bottle shops with the pubs and poker machines in ALH Group – the joint venture Mr Mathieson’s family had with Woolworths.

Mr Mathieson is considered the best pub deal-maker in the country, having bought and sold about 1000 of them since acquiring his first hotel in 1975. The 80-year-old is also battling myeloma, an aggressive type of blood cancer.

He left the Endeavour board in 2022 and was replaced by son Bruce Mathieson Jnr, who stepped down as a director this year. More recently, the Mathieson family gained a representative on the board when Peter Hardy was appointed last week.

Bruce Mathieson Jr left the Endeavour Group board this year

The Mathieson family is also understood to have been unimpressed with the recent appointment of a new managing director of ALH Hotels, Paul Carew – who has been Tabcorp’s chief operating officer.

Without mentioning specific names, Mr Mathieson said Endeavour leadership “keeps bringing in all these people who have no experience.”

Mr Mathieson last year waged a campaign against the Endeavour board in what became a very public and bitter corporate stoush before a truce was finally announced.

The peace treaty included the departure of then Endeavour chairman Peter Hearl and Bruce Mathieson Jr stepping down as a director and eventually replaced by a representative approved by the rest of board, which turned out to be Mr Hardy.

Mr Donohue told the AGM on Wednesday that he was “as invigorated as I was when I first started 30 years ago” as a summer casual at Dan Murphys store in Melbourne’s Alphington, and that he looked “forward to supporting our teams and serving our customers this festive season and right through until I eventually pass the leadership of this great business to the next CEO.”

Additional reporting: Eli Greenblat.

Originally published as Billionaire Bruce Mathieson lashes out at Endeavour Group ‘disaster’ as pub civil war reignites