CX Media Kit
| Staging look to outsider |
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| Written by Julius Grafton | |
| Friday, 05 September 2008 | |
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Staging Connections have replaced outgoing CEO Michael Gardner with an industry outsider, Tony Chamberlain. Mr Chamberlain was the CEO of Chubb Australasia, where he presided over a turnover of A$1.2 billion and 12,000 staff. Chubb was acquired by Security and Intelligence Services in July this year. Now he controls a company with turnover just shy of A$200 million, and 1,100 staff.
The replacement of Michael Gardner was not unexpected, Mr. Gardner was the driver of a 'growth through acquisition' scheme which saw the market leading events production company buy a raft of businesses across the past two years. Those businesses sometimes fitted well with the firms core activities, other times not. The outcome is a bank debt approaching $100 million and some awkward questions from shareholders who have seen the publicly listed company share price crash from a high near $1.60 to just 14 cents today. Along the way there were some questionable decisions. One of these was to pay in excess of $42 million for the lighting and screens business of Bytecraft Entertainment, leaving Bytecraft Systems in the hands of Tattersals. The split of the two Bytecraft entities saw Tatts keep what they wanted - the gaming machine service business, while Staging got the lighting and screens company. The Bytecraft story is one that will probably become an MBA case study, because it looks like Tatts got the deal of the century since they paid less for the whole of the two Bytecraft businesses, and then sold the part they didn't want for still more money. Bytecraft Entertainment is a good business, with a lot of very talented people inside. Its CEO was Stephen Found, who is clearly an excellent negotiator. He was paid $1,178,852 by Tatts on his resignation - and then went on the books at Staging Connections where he remains employed today. The acquisitions stopped at the end of last year, when the sharemarket crash saw Staging's share price fall. When the market rallied, Staging didn't, and the share price kept heading south. The last acquisition of note was Essential Lighting Group of the UK, the first of a planned raft of UK and European event supply houses. With the crash came an end to the strategy, and now Essential sits as a profitable but isolated arm of Staging Connections Group Limited - SCGL. Early this week Staging announced results for the year to June 2008, with turnover up but an overall loss of over $3 million, attributed to one-off events. These include an ongoing dispute with Oracle, who were to supply an enterprise wide I.T. system, and extra writedowns on Bytecraft. The results include a staggering $4,141,000 spent on travel, against just $1.3 million the previous year. Morale at Staging Connections in Australia has been improving, due to the exhaustive efforts of senior operational management including Chief Operating Officer Ben Ashton, and Operations Director, Teresa Amey. Tony Chamberlain faces a steep learning curve that has not been easy for previous outsiders. The events industry is tightly knit, and hard to measure against the usual corporate metrics. Last year Bob Drewstow came in from the corporate world of Telecoms to manage Video Plus, the second largest company of kind after Staging Connections. He fast discovered the differences, and reportedly managed to adapt his mindset around dealing with creative and passionate events people. Tony Chamberlain should have a coffee with him. |
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