Gość: Prymus
IP: *.mel.iprimus.net.au
02.12.04, 11:15
Bowiem takie ma podobno imie praktycznie
byly szef firmy Telstra (dawniej Telecom Australia),
za ktorego razdow akcje owej Telstry byly tansze niz
ich cena emisyjna.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11558780%
5E28737,00.html
Going, going, gone
Richard Gluyas
December 02, 2004
A DINNER for Telstra's directors and divisional heads on Tuesday at the chic
Sydney harbourside restaurant Coast was, in effect, the last supper for chief
executive Ziggy Switkowski.
The guest of honour, however, was absent, having been laid low by a severe
virus that resulted in his hospitalisation on Monday.
Switkowski has diligently retained his fitness, despite living for 5 1/2
years in the goldfish bowl that is the nature of being Telstra chief
executive.
Officially, it all came to an end yesterday when new Telstra chairman Donald
McGauchie and his fellow directors gathered for a scheduled monthly board
meeting, again in Sydney. Switkowski participated by telephone from his
expansive, high-security home in Melbourne's salubrious Toorak.
The board agreed on departure terms, including a minimum payment of $2.1
million, and a typically gruff McGauchie was left to face investors and the
media, swatting away questions that were not to his liking.
It is a sad fact, though, that history is likely to be a harsh judge of
former nuclear physicist Switkowski, 56, despite a strong endorsement
yesterday from the man who presided over his appointment, Richard Alston.
"I think he's done an excellent job in difficult circumstances," the former
communications minister says. "The absence of an obvious growth path after
the dotcom crash was always going to present great challenges and raise the
impatience level of investors. But he showed great finesse in dealing with
issues and relationships with government. Telstra is a political football
where everything it does is heavily scrutinised, and Ziggy's done well to
exceed the average tenure of CEOs."
History does indeed show that Telstra emerged relatively unscathed as its
global rivals crashed and burned after the 1990s technology and
telecommunications boom. But it will also record that Telstra joined its
peers at the edge of the abyss, with Switkowski and his former chairman, Bob
Mansfield, eager to execute the same strategies.
The company flirted with disaster and was only saved from far greater
embarrassment by its majority government ownership and an interventionist
board.
Switkowski was chosen to succeed Frank Blount in 1999 ahead of his two main
internal rivals, incumbent National Australia Bank director Paul Rizzo and
wireless internet provider Unwired's chairman Peter Shore.
He clinched the job, according to a well-placed insider, with a compelling
presentation about future growth opportunities, where Telstra would leave
fortress Australia and expand offshore. It would also become a key player in
the converging media and telecommunications industries.
"Ziggy's vision was up-beat and he pretty much came through the pack, much to
the surprise of everyone," one insider recalls.
"It was a hot market for telco CEOs and the best external candidates would
have cost around $35million for five years. That was before you paid out the
stock options they had in their existing jobs. We could not see ourselves
getting to that level under majority government ownership."
Switkowski was keen to deliver on his vision, frequently talking in terms of
lost opportunities unless Telstra discarded its bureaucratic ways, embraced
the new internet paradigm and made decisions at "internet speed".
When the hyperactive Mansfield was parachuted from John Howard's office into
the Telstra chairman's job in January 2000, it was felt, at least initially,
that Switkowski was under threat. The Telstra boss had succeeded Mansfield as
Optus chief executive and, as is the custom for new CEOs, had made no secret
of the challenges he felt his predecessor had left behind.
But instead the two men developed what many Telstra insiders viewed as an
unhealthily close and mutually supportive bond. A former Telstra director
told The Australian earlier this year that Mansfield's appointment helped
create an "awful" culture, where the focus switched from efficiency gains and
becoming more customer and shareholder driven to "tangential deal-making".
He recalled a period from 2000 when the board, in quick succession, knocked
back Project Patrick, the proposed $10billion purchase of Kerry Packer's
Publishing & Broadcasting, and a float of the Sensis directories business.
As with this year's proposal to combine Sensis with publisher John Fairfax,
the leaking of which led to Mansfield's departure, the previous Sensis
transaction had been run past the Prime Minister's office.
"We rolled our eyes and rolled the deal," the former director said. "But a
situation was developing where we were jumping from one thing to the next,
and the board couldn't really review anything because the tangential moves
were coming from the chairman.
"It was hard for the executive to knock them back because (Switkowski) was
trying to get on with Bob in the slipstream."
It was after this succession of knockbacks, also in 2000, that Mansfield and
Switkowski presented to the Telstra board a proposed $5 billion mobiles and
telecommunications infrastructure deal with Richard Li's Pacific Century
CyberWorks.
Telstra has paid dearly for its PCCW dalliance, progressively writing off
about $3 billion in value from the assets that were purchased. The
infrastructure company assets are now valued at zero in Telstra's books.
Despite reservations at the time, at least one director felt the board had no
option but to wave the deal through.
"Bob and Ziggy had already been rolled twice, and the board can't keep on
rolling the CEO," he said. "It's been a constant embarrassment, but the board
had to go along with it."
Switkowski has made a better fist of defending Telstra's expansive patch in
Australia, although its mobiles division has been under extreme pressure from
determined rivals Optus, Vodafone and Hutchison Telecommunications,
controlled by Li's father, Li Ka-shing.
Telstra remains dominant, but Optus's market share has risen strongly from 29
per cent in the late 1990s to its current level of about 35 per cent.
While the wholesale division, which rents out Telstra's various networks to
competitors, has been a financial highlight, it has also created an
implacable foe in the form of the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission.
The ACCC now has a whole division dedicated to evening up a lop-sided
telecommunications market. Says one senior industry figure: "The ACCC and
Telstra have been fighting a huge war, but if you look at it battle by
battle, there's no doubt that Telstra has won. So you'd have to chalk that up
as a win for Ziggy and [Telstra wholesale chief] Bruce Akhurst."
For Switkowski, though, the die was cast when an already factionalised board
became even more polarised after the proposed Fairfax deal was blocked.
Former Telstra director Sam Chisholm formed a tight coalition with fellow non-
executive directors such as Coles Myer boss John Fletcher and CSIRO chairman
Catherine Livingstone.
Chisholm reportedly became fond of telling colleagues that Switkowski's real
name was John Smith, and that he'd changed it to make him sound smarter. A
powerful force in any business setting, Chisholm is not a man to be crossed,
or humoured, in the boardroom. There are suggestions he left the Telstra
board only once he became confident his allies had Switkowski's measure.
Confirmation came with McGauchie's appointment as chairman. Switkowski's
preference is understood to have been his ow
