Speaker 1: Already and this is this is the daily This is
Speaker 1: the Daily. Ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday, the twenty
Speaker 1: eighth of October. I'm Harry, I'm Sam. Late last week,
Speaker 1: the CEO of one of Australia's biggest tech companies, Wise
Speaker 1: Tech Global, Richard White, stepped down. It came after a
Speaker 1: major investigation by nine newspapers into the billionaire founder of
Speaker 1: the software and logistics business. An outpouring of scandals, both
Speaker 1: in his professional and private life, have dominated the headlines
Speaker 1: ever since. In today's deep dive, we'll have a look
Speaker 1: at the Richard White scandal and what it could mean
Speaker 1: for the global juggernaut in the tech world. The first
Speaker 1: Sam what's making headlines.
Speaker 2: The Liberal National Party has won the Queensland state election,
Speaker 2: defeating the nine year incumbent Labor Government. LMP leader David
Speaker 2: Jucifully will become the next Queensland Premier. It's only the
Speaker 2: second time the LNP has one power in Queensland since
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. Outgoing Labour Premier Stephen Miles conceded too
Speaker 2: Chrisofully in a phone call yesterday. With results so far
Speaker 2: showing that ALP is set to lose about fifteen seats.
Speaker 1: US President Joe Biden has made an historic apology to
Speaker 1: Native American communities over a policy that forcibly removed Indigenous
Speaker 1: children from their families. Around one hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 1: students were made to attend boarding schools under the policy
Speaker 1: that lasted about one hundred and fifty years between eighteen
Speaker 1: nineteen and nineteen sixty nine. Many of the schools were
Speaker 1: run by church groups, with students often suffering physical and
Speaker 1: emotional abuse. According to government data, at least nine hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three American, Indian, Alaska, Native, and Native Hawaiian
Speaker 1: children died at the schools under the policy. President by
Speaker 1: boas and attended an event in Arizona over the weekend
Speaker 1: where he acknowledged the pain and suffering of the Native
Speaker 1: American communities and delivered the first apology from a government
Speaker 1: official of its kind in front of a gathering of
Speaker 1: community members and leaders. Biden said, quote, a formal apology
Speaker 1: to the Indian nations for the way we treated their
Speaker 1: children for so many years was something that we should
Speaker 1: have done a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Australia's Telcos are planning to completely switch off their three
Speaker 2: gene networks from today. Telstra and Optus say the switch
Speaker 2: is necessary to improve the capacity, speed and reliability of
Speaker 2: their four G and five gen networks. Vodafone already completed
Speaker 2: its three G shutdown earlier this year. Following the switch off,
Speaker 2: devices relying on the three gen network will be unable
Speaker 2: to make or receive calls, sends texts, or access the Internet.
Speaker 2: This includes emergency calls and In today's good news, a
Speaker 2: team of researchers in the US have discovered fossils of
Speaker 2: a swamp dwelling mammal dating back to the age of dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: Palaeontologists from the University of Colorado discovered the Helio Cola
Speaker 2: pisoners in their state, which they say weighed about the
Speaker 2: same as a chicken. Believed to be the cousin of
Speaker 2: modern day marsupials, it would have predominantly lived in and
Speaker 2: around swamps. It's believed the little swamp dweller would have
Speaker 2: lived around seventy to seventy five million years ago, at
Speaker 2: a time when central West America would have been largely underwater.
Speaker 2: In what scientists say is a red discovery of a
Speaker 2: new species from the Cretaceous period. Okay, so Harry, last
Speaker 2: week there was a bit of a frenzy in tabloids,
Speaker 2: but the business papers of Australia really zoned in on
Speaker 2: Richard White, this guy who I hadn't particularly been familiar with,
Speaker 2: but all of a sudden he was everywhere. I still
Speaker 2: don't fully understand who Richard White is and what his company,
Speaker 2: Wise tech Global, actually does. Why don't we go back
Speaker 2: to basics first, help me answer those two questions. I
Speaker 2: think it's not unusual that you didn't know who Richard
Speaker 2: White was. In an interview with the Australian Financial Review
Speaker 2: a little earlier this year, he actually described being quite
Speaker 2: a private person and so he has really ascended up
Speaker 2: into billionaire status quite quickly. But he's actually a fairly
Speaker 2: unknown figure in the business world, and I think it's
Speaker 2: not unfair to say that many people would have been
Speaker 2: looking at the headlines and sort of not knowing who
Speaker 2: he was as well.
Speaker 1: But then secret, lover, mansion, kind of all these all
Speaker 1: these words started popping up. It was just, you know,
Speaker 1: the perfect headline grabbar.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: So he co founded Wistek, which is one of the
Speaker 1: biggest logistics companies in the world.
Speaker 2: And breakdown what that means. Formuat mean one of those
Speaker 2: corporate words. Oh my god's still logistics software like all
Speaker 2: the buzzwords, right, But basically what it is is a
Speaker 2: business trying to make the international trade of goods and
Speaker 2: services easier.
Speaker 1: So wyse Tech's mostly based on exporting for freight. So
Speaker 1: if we think about just international trade, things have to
Speaker 1: move from warehouses, it needs to then be moved to
Speaker 1: somewhere to customize product, and then it needs to be
Speaker 1: shipped to somewhere like Australia but could be via Singapore.
Speaker 1: So wyse Tech is the business that tries to simplify
Speaker 1: that process for the shipping companies, right.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like project management software used by
Speaker 2: shipping companies exactly.
Speaker 1: I just think of it as trying to make it
Speaker 1: as simple and as user friendly as possible for these
Speaker 1: companies because it's a very complicated world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and by trade, you're not talking about like the
Speaker 2: one candle I bought on Amazon for thirty dollars. You're
Speaker 2: talking about masses and volumes and freight containers and ships.
Speaker 1: These are big clients. These are big clients doing huge
Speaker 1: amounts of trade around the world and worth a lot
Speaker 1: of money.
Speaker 2: Well, and so is the client of whys Tech Global
Speaker 2: company not a person effectively?
Speaker 1: Yes, So I couldn't exactly just go up to wires
Speaker 1: Tech and say hey, I need some things shipped because
Speaker 1: they're sort of the back end organizers of that kind
Speaker 1: of process.
Speaker 2: And what are we talking valuation wise?
Speaker 1: It was publicly listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen and it's now worth roughly thirty three billion
Speaker 1: dollars in Australian dollars. And Richard White actually scraped into
Speaker 1: the afr's Rich List top ten at the start of
Speaker 1: this year and he's worth something to the tune of
Speaker 1: about twelve and a half billion dollars according to Forbes.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're talking really about one of the richest
Speaker 2: people in Australia, a very powerful figure in business and
Speaker 2: in the shipping international landscape. But why are we talking
Speaker 2: about him today? Why are we talking about him on
Speaker 2: the daily os.
Speaker 1: So it's not about the business itself of whites Tech,
Speaker 1: but it was all about Richard White last week because
Speaker 1: a major investigation conducted by the nine newspapers. So the
Speaker 1: Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review.
Speaker 1: They looked into some of these scandals surrounding Richard White himself.
Speaker 1: They detailed some individual matters involving White, and there were
Speaker 1: quite a few of them, so bear with me, Sam
Speaker 1: as I try to summarize them. In twenty twenty, White
Speaker 1: had told the board of wis Tech that his former
Speaker 1: partner was legally pursuing him over a house that he
Speaker 1: had bought her two years earlier, but that matter has
Speaker 1: since been resolved. Secondly, it was alleged that White had
Speaker 1: a seven year relationship with an employee at wires Tech,
Speaker 1: and after they broke up, he brought her a seven
Speaker 1: million dollar property in Melbourne. There was, thirdly, this story
Speaker 1: relating to his now wife, Zinna Nassar, who it emerged
Speaker 1: how to approached police in twenty twenty one to get
Speaker 1: what's known as an apprehended violence order against White. She
Speaker 1: later withdrew that request. Pair are now married and they
Speaker 1: have a child together. There was a fourth story which
Speaker 1: centered around these female entrepreneurs that provided evidence to the
Speaker 1: nine newspapers that Richard White had been reaching out them
Speaker 1: via LinkedIn and social media, where he was initially offering
Speaker 1: some professional advice, but then the conversation would veer very
Speaker 1: sharply into very sexually laden language, and the messages often
Speaker 1: became overtly sexual. And then after some of these stories emerged,
Speaker 1: the snowball sort of got a bit bigger because more
Speaker 1: women came out to say that they had had relationships
Speaker 1: with Richard White. There was a woman who told the
Speaker 1: Australian newspaper that both she and White had had a
Speaker 1: casual relationship before his current wife reached out to her
Speaker 1: and told her to stop contacting him.
Speaker 2: Well, so we're talking about a serious volume of complaints
Speaker 2: against Richard White that go back a number of years.
Speaker 2: I also saw there was a matter with an ex
Speaker 2: partner that was settled in court last week. Talk about
Speaker 2: that for timing. What was that about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's just not like Richard White had enough
Speaker 1: going on, as it was in the headline. So it
Speaker 1: was his separate federal court case. But that was between
Speaker 1: Richard White and a wellness influencer, Linda Rogan, who was
Speaker 1: his ex partner. Rogan owns Laser CLINICX in Sydney, Cans
Speaker 1: and Auckland. She was also contender to go on the
Speaker 1: Real Housewives of Sydney. Back in twenty twenty two, the
Speaker 1: federal court case related to a thirteen point one million
Speaker 1: dollar property in for clues for anyone that doesn't know that,
Speaker 1: that's quite a wealthy suburb in Sydney, right by the beach,
Speaker 1: and effectively White bought this property for Rogan. She had
Speaker 1: apparently spent about ninety one thousand dollars on luxury furniture
Speaker 1: for the house. There was a bit of back and
Speaker 1: forth about this money and who would stump up for it,
Speaker 1: and the matter ended up in the federal court. There
Speaker 1: was another big part of this story. In a statement
Speaker 1: to the court, Rogan had alleged that White had ex
Speaker 1: expected her to have sex with him in return for
Speaker 1: his investments in her businesses. So there was an alleged
Speaker 1: transactional relationship there. But we don't know if that's true
Speaker 1: at all because the matter was actually settled out of court,
Speaker 1: so it never progressed, and that a trial week. That
Speaker 1: all happened last week that wrapped up, so the legal
Speaker 1: action was all settled, and so we don't have any
Speaker 1: further evidence on the public record. We only have those
Speaker 1: statements that were put forward, but they're never going to
Speaker 1: be legally tested.
Speaker 2: So zooming out though if you look at this last month,
Speaker 2: even if you ignore those legal proceedings in that particular settlement,
Speaker 2: just the other avenues that have opened up concerning Richard White,
Speaker 2: What do you think has been so important about what's
Speaker 2: emerged recently?
Speaker 1: Well, there was I guess a bit of a mix
Speaker 1: between his personal and professional life in these headlines, and
Speaker 1: those streams definitely intersected.
Speaker 2: Which is particularly interesting for a publicly listed company, right
Speaker 2: where you've got shareholders who could be any of.
Speaker 1: Us, absolutely, and I think that's where we get into
Speaker 1: a bit of discussion about behavior standards in not just workplace,
Speaker 1: but at the very senior ranks of a company and
Speaker 1: what do your shareholders expect of you. So there was
Speaker 1: also a memo that was sent out in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: that the nine newspapers had got a hold of last week,
Speaker 1: and that was from one of the former directors of
Speaker 1: wis Tech, Christine Holman. She was on the board and
Speaker 1: left after about ten months at the company in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and on her way out she explained to the board
Speaker 1: that part of her reason for leaving was because of
Speaker 1: White's quote sustained intimidation and bullying, and he had engaged
Speaker 1: in what she called unacceptable behavior, and she listed things
Speaker 1: like he would send very aggressive emails, he would publicly
Speaker 1: humiliate some of his staff and berate them in front
Speaker 1: of other people, and in very important audit meetings and
Speaker 1: committee meetings, he would also intimidate people and make them
Speaker 1: feel ridiculed, according to Holman, And.
Speaker 2: It does take on another character, doesn't it, when it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily extramarital affairs or something it's happening outside of this.
Speaker 1: It's purely the workplace.
Speaker 2: This is a workplace issue, now.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I think it's just important to stop
Speaker 1: here because as far as we know, and the information
Speaker 1: that was given to the nine newspapers doesn't really make
Speaker 1: it clear whether Christine Holman was suggesting that Richard White
Speaker 1: had been bullying her necessarily, but was observing his behavior
Speaker 1: and characterizing it in that way. So there are still
Speaker 1: a few unknowns about what could have happened. Wis Tech's board,
Speaker 1: for its part, also hasn't commented on any of the claims,
Speaker 1: but it did note that the media reports were coming
Speaker 1: out about Richard White last week and that it was
Speaker 1: looking into it.
Speaker 2: So these massive stories have come out, We're now moving
Speaker 2: and talking about the actual business itself. There must have
Speaker 2: been some business impacts. Talk me through how the last
Speaker 2: week was for wise Tech as a company.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it was a very dramatic way on the
Speaker 1: stock exchange for them. So the company's stocks tanked. The
Speaker 1: more stories that came out about Richard White, the further
Speaker 1: the share price fell. So at its low, the share
Speaker 1: price dropped about twenty five percent compared to the start
Speaker 1: of the week, and it all built up into this
Speaker 1: big announcement. After a few days of these headlines where
Speaker 1: Richard White announced that he was stepping down as the
Speaker 1: company's CEO, Wise Tech published quite a long statement on
Speaker 1: the stock exchange after recognizing the media reports, where they
Speaker 1: confirmed that White would still work at the company and
Speaker 1: would start a new full time consulting role at wis
Speaker 1: Tech after he took a little bit of time off
Speaker 1: and he'll be paid a million dollars a year in
Speaker 1: the job. What didn't address the allegations in the ASX announcement,
Speaker 1: but he said, quote, it has been a challenging time
Speaker 1: for me personally, my family and close friends, and for
Speaker 1: the company that I have built and truly love.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Share rallied quite substantially after Richard White announced that he
Speaker 1: was stepping down. The share price bounce back about fourteen
Speaker 1: percent in a day. It raises a really important question,
Speaker 1: and it goes back to what we had touched on
Speaker 1: just a little bit earlier, which was how much responsibility
Speaker 1: does a company's founder added CEO have over the entire
Speaker 1: culture and the overall governance of a company, and how
Speaker 1: much is left to the rest of the business. And
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be really interesting because wise
Speaker 1: Tech have an annual general meeting next month, and then
Speaker 1: there's also an investor day in December, and Richard White,
Speaker 1: while he stepped down as CEO, he's still part of
Speaker 1: the company, and it's going to be interesting to see
Speaker 1: whether wise Tech's big clients and shareholders will be satisfied
Speaker 1: with how the company have handled the allegations or whether
Speaker 1: the company is not in the cleue yet.
Speaker 2: What I find really interesting about the next couple of
Speaker 2: weeks and months for wise Tech is the separation and
Speaker 2: the investigation that's going to need to happen. Between that
Speaker 2: question you ask about the founder's role in all of
Speaker 2: this between personal responsibility and what he actually did and
Speaker 2: what else was happening at the culture of the company
Speaker 2: because of behavior modeled at the top. And there's nothing proven,
Speaker 2: there's been nothing publicly released. There's always needing to be
Speaker 2: thorough investigations into all of this. But you have one
Speaker 2: of the biggest companies in Australia with a serious issue
Speaker 2: that started with the founder of the company. This is
Speaker 2: a big end of town dealing with a very serious matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a company that has offices all over
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, and yeah, you're right. Richard White's one
Speaker 1: legal case has been settled out of court now, so
Speaker 1: there's no other criminal proceedings or civil proceedings against him
Speaker 1: as far as we know. And I think it's just
Speaker 1: going to be so interesting to see the fallout, as
Speaker 1: I said, as the public learns more about White's alleged
Speaker 1: past and his alleged misconduct as well. And there's definitely
Speaker 1: something to be said about how you set the culture
Speaker 1: at the top. And I think it is important because
Speaker 1: ultimately I think we're in a world now where shareholders
Speaker 1: and customers expect a bit better.
Speaker 2: Harry, thanks so much for joining us. Would appreciate if
Speaker 2: you kept us updated on this story as it evolves,
Speaker 2: and thank you for joining us on the Daily Ods
Speaker 2: this morning. I hope you're having a good start to
Speaker 2: the week already. We'll be here with you every day
Speaker 2: this week, bringing you the big headlines. We're absolutely steamrolling
Speaker 2: towards the US election. Make sure you tap in and
Speaker 2: don't miss an episode as we bring you the latest
Speaker 2: headlines from the US. That's all we've got for you today,
Speaker 2: though we'll be back again tomorrow.
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations.
Speaker 2: We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
Speaker 2: both past and present