Already and this is this is the daily This is the Daily. Ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday, the twenty eighth of October. I'm Harry, I'm Sam. Late last week, the CEO of one of Australia's biggest tech companies, Wise Tech Global, Richard White, stepped down. It came after a major investigation by nine newspapers into the billionaire founder of
the software and logistics business. An outpouring of scandals, both in his professional and private life, have dominated the headlines ever since. In today's deep dive, we'll have a look at the Richard White scandal and what it could mean for the global juggernaut in the tech world. The first Sam what's making headlines.
The Liberal National Party has won the Queensland state election, defeating the nine year incumbent Labor Government. LMP leader David Jucifully will become the next Queensland Premier. It's only the second time the LNP has one power in Queensland since nineteen eighty nine. Outgoing Labour Premier Stephen Miles conceded too Chrisofully in a phone call yesterday. With results so far showing that ALP is set to lose about fifteen seats.
US President Joe Biden has made an historic apology to Native American communities over a policy that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families. Around one hundred and eighty thousand students were made to attend boarding schools under the policy that lasted about one hundred and fifty years between eighteen nineteen and nineteen sixty nine. Many of the schools were run by church groups, with students often suffering physical and
emotional abuse. According to government data, at least nine hundred and seventy three American, Indian, Alaska, Native, and Native Hawaiian children died at the schools under the policy. President by boas and attended an event in Arizona over the weekend where he acknowledged the pain and suffering of the Native American communities and delivered the first apology from a government official of its kind in front of a gathering of
community members and leaders. Biden said, quote, a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years was something that we should have done a long time ago.
Australia's Telcos are planning to completely switch off their three gene networks from today. Telstra and Optus say the switch is necessary to improve the capacity, speed and reliability of their four G and five gen networks. Vodafone already completed its three G shutdown earlier this year. Following the switch off, devices relying on the three gen network will be unable to make or receive calls, sends texts, or access the Internet.
This includes emergency calls and In today's good news, a team of researchers in the US have discovered fossils of a swamp dwelling mammal dating back to the age of dinosaurs. Palaeontologists from the University of Colorado discovered the Helio Cola pisoners in their state, which they say weighed about the same as a chicken. Believed to be the cousin of modern day marsupials, it would have predominantly lived in and
around swamps. It's believed the little swamp dweller would have lived around seventy to seventy five million years ago, at a time when central West America would have been largely underwater. In what scientists say is a red discovery of a new species from the Cretaceous period. Okay, so Harry, last week there was a bit of a frenzy in tabloids, but the business papers of Australia really zoned in on Richard White, this guy who I hadn't particularly been familiar with,
but all of a sudden he was everywhere. I still don't fully understand who Richard White is and what his company, Wise tech Global, actually does. Why don't we go back to basics first, help me answer those two questions. I think it's not unusual that you didn't know who Richard White was. In an interview with the Australian Financial Review a little earlier this year, he actually described being quite a private person and so he has really ascended up
into billionaire status quite quickly. But he's actually a fairly unknown figure in the business world, and I think it's not unfair to say that many people would have been looking at the headlines and sort of not knowing who he was as well.
But then secret, lover, mansion, kind of all these all these words started popping up. It was just, you know, the perfect headline grabbar.
I guess.
So he co founded Wistek, which is one of the biggest logistics companies in the world.
And breakdown what that means. Formuat mean one of those corporate words. Oh my god's still logistics software like all the buzzwords, right, But basically what it is is a business trying to make the international trade of goods and services easier.
So wyse Tech's mostly based on exporting for freight. So if we think about just international trade, things have to move from warehouses, it needs to then be moved to somewhere to customize product, and then it needs to be shipped to somewhere like Australia but could be via Singapore. So wyse Tech is the business that tries to simplify that process for the shipping companies, right.
So it's kind of like project management software used by shipping companies exactly.
I just think of it as trying to make it as simple and as user friendly as possible for these companies because it's a very complicated world.
Yeah, and by trade, you're not talking about like the one candle I bought on Amazon for thirty dollars. You're talking about masses and volumes and freight containers and ships.
These are big clients. These are big clients doing huge amounts of trade around the world and worth a lot of money.
Well, and so is the client of whys Tech Global company not a person effectively?
Yes, So I couldn't exactly just go up to wires Tech and say hey, I need some things shipped because they're sort of the back end organizers of that kind of process.
And what are we talking valuation wise?
It was publicly listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in twenty sixteen and it's now worth roughly thirty three billion dollars in Australian dollars. And Richard White actually scraped into the afr's Rich List top ten at the start of this year and he's worth something to the tune of about twelve and a half billion dollars according to Forbes.
Okay, so we're talking really about one of the richest people in Australia, a very powerful figure in business and in the shipping international landscape. But why are we talking about him today? Why are we talking about him on the daily os.
So it's not about the business itself of whites Tech, but it was all about Richard White last week because a major investigation conducted by the nine newspapers. So the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review. They looked into some of these scandals surrounding Richard White himself. They detailed some individual matters involving White, and there were quite a few of them, so bear with me, Sam
as I try to summarize them. In twenty twenty, White had told the board of wis Tech that his former partner was legally pursuing him over a house that he had bought her two years earlier, but that matter has since been resolved. Secondly, it was alleged that White had a seven year relationship with an employee at wires Tech, and after they broke up, he brought her a seven
million dollar property in Melbourne. There was, thirdly, this story relating to his now wife, Zinna Nassar, who it emerged how to approached police in twenty twenty one to get what's known as an apprehended violence order against White. She later withdrew that request. Pair are now married and they
have a child together. There was a fourth story which centered around these female entrepreneurs that provided evidence to the nine newspapers that Richard White had been reaching out them via LinkedIn and social media, where he was initially offering some professional advice, but then the conversation would veer very sharply into very sexually laden language, and the messages often
became overtly sexual. And then after some of these stories emerged, the snowball sort of got a bit bigger because more women came out to say that they had had relationships with Richard White. There was a woman who told the Australian newspaper that both she and White had had a casual relationship before his current wife reached out to her and told her to stop contacting him.
Well, so we're talking about a serious volume of complaints against Richard White that go back a number of years. I also saw there was a matter with an ex partner that was settled in court last week. Talk about that for timing. What was that about?
Yeah, exactly. It's just not like Richard White had enough going on, as it was in the headline. So it was his separate federal court case. But that was between Richard White and a wellness influencer, Linda Rogan, who was his ex partner. Rogan owns Laser CLINICX in Sydney, Cans and Auckland. She was also contender to go on the
Real Housewives of Sydney. Back in twenty twenty two, the federal court case related to a thirteen point one million dollar property in for clues for anyone that doesn't know that, that's quite a wealthy suburb in Sydney, right by the beach, and effectively White bought this property for Rogan. She had apparently spent about ninety one thousand dollars on luxury furniture for the house. There was a bit of back and forth about this money and who would stump up for it,
and the matter ended up in the federal court. There was another big part of this story. In a statement to the court, Rogan had alleged that White had ex expected her to have sex with him in return for his investments in her businesses. So there was an alleged transactional relationship there. But we don't know if that's true at all because the matter was actually settled out of court,
so it never progressed, and that a trial week. That all happened last week that wrapped up, so the legal action was all settled, and so we don't have any further evidence on the public record. We only have those statements that were put forward, but they're never going to be legally tested.
So zooming out though if you look at this last month, even if you ignore those legal proceedings in that particular settlement, just the other avenues that have opened up concerning Richard White, What do you think has been so important about what's emerged recently?
Well, there was I guess a bit of a mix between his personal and professional life in these headlines, and those streams definitely intersected.
Which is particularly interesting for a publicly listed company, right where you've got shareholders who could be any of.
Us, absolutely, and I think that's where we get into a bit of discussion about behavior standards in not just workplace, but at the very senior ranks of a company and what do your shareholders expect of you. So there was also a memo that was sent out in twenty nineteen that the nine newspapers had got a hold of last week, and that was from one of the former directors of
wis Tech, Christine Holman. She was on the board and left after about ten months at the company in twenty nineteen, and on her way out she explained to the board that part of her reason for leaving was because of White's quote sustained intimidation and bullying, and he had engaged in what she called unacceptable behavior, and she listed things like he would send very aggressive emails, he would publicly humiliate some of his staff and berate them in front
of other people, and in very important audit meetings and committee meetings, he would also intimidate people and make them feel ridiculed, according to Holman, And.
It does take on another character, doesn't it, when it's not necessarily extramarital affairs or something it's happening outside of this.
It's purely the workplace.
This is a workplace issue, now.
That's right. And I think it's just important to stop here because as far as we know, and the information that was given to the nine newspapers doesn't really make it clear whether Christine Holman was suggesting that Richard White had been bullying her necessarily, but was observing his behavior and characterizing it in that way. So there are still
a few unknowns about what could have happened. Wis Tech's board, for its part, also hasn't commented on any of the claims, but it did note that the media reports were coming out about Richard White last week and that it was looking into it.
So these massive stories have come out, We're now moving and talking about the actual business itself. There must have been some business impacts. Talk me through how the last week was for wise Tech as a company.
Yes, so it was a very dramatic way on the stock exchange for them. So the company's stocks tanked. The more stories that came out about Richard White, the further the share price fell. So at its low, the share price dropped about twenty five percent compared to the start of the week, and it all built up into this
big announcement. After a few days of these headlines where Richard White announced that he was stepping down as the company's CEO, Wise Tech published quite a long statement on the stock exchange after recognizing the media reports, where they confirmed that White would still work at the company and would start a new full time consulting role at wis Tech after he took a little bit of time off and he'll be paid a million dollars a year in
the job. What didn't address the allegations in the ASX announcement, but he said, quote, it has been a challenging time for me personally, my family and close friends, and for the company that I have built and truly love.
Now.
Share rallied quite substantially after Richard White announced that he was stepping down. The share price bounce back about fourteen percent in a day. It raises a really important question, and it goes back to what we had touched on just a little bit earlier, which was how much responsibility does a company's founder added CEO have over the entire culture and the overall governance of a company, and how
much is left to the rest of the business. And I think it's going to be really interesting because wise Tech have an annual general meeting next month, and then there's also an investor day in December, and Richard White, while he stepped down as CEO, he's still part of the company, and it's going to be interesting to see whether wise Tech's big clients and shareholders will be satisfied with how the company have handled the allegations or whether the company is not in the cleue yet.
What I find really interesting about the next couple of weeks and months for wise Tech is the separation and the investigation that's going to need to happen. Between that question you ask about the founder's role in all of this between personal responsibility and what he actually did and what else was happening at the culture of the company because of behavior modeled at the top. And there's nothing proven, there's been nothing publicly released. There's always needing to be
thorough investigations into all of this. But you have one of the biggest companies in Australia with a serious issue that started with the founder of the company. This is a big end of town dealing with a very serious matter.
Yeah, this is a company that has offices all over the world. Yeah, and yeah, you're right. Richard White's one legal case has been settled out of court now, so there's no other criminal proceedings or civil proceedings against him as far as we know. And I think it's just going to be so interesting to see the fallout, as I said, as the public learns more about White's alleged past and his alleged misconduct as well. And there's definitely something to be said about how you set the culture
at the top. And I think it is important because ultimately I think we're in a world now where shareholders and customers expect a bit better.
Harry, thanks so much for joining us. Would appreciate if you kept us updated on this story as it evolves, and thank you for joining us on the Daily Ods this morning. I hope you're having a good start to the week already. We'll be here with you every day this week, bringing you the big headlines. We're absolutely steamrolling towards the US election. Make sure you tap in and don't miss an episode as we bring you the latest
headlines from the US. That's all we've got for you today, though we'll be back again tomorrow.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
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