White-knuckle ride
While WiseTech's board exodus contributed to big losses for the company's investors today, it looks like a win for scandal-hit founder Richard White.
In the dizzying chronicle of Richard White’s WiseTech leadership saga, today's events will surely be recorded as a major turning point.
Even with the market bracing for big news ever since WiseTech entered a trading halt last Thursday, investors were evidently not expecting a bombshell like the company's chairman and three of its five independent directors resigning, citing “intractable differences” and “differing views around the ongoing role of the founder”.
In investors minds’, White is the man who made WiseTech the world’s leading shipping logistics software company, and it looks plausible that the resignations mean he could end up with a bigger position at the company rather than a diminished one.
E&P analyst Paul Mason wrote in a note that there was “panic” after last week’s trading halt, and that today’s announcement made clear that some of the board wanted to “shrink” White’s role, but those directors have now departed. “So,” he wrote, “this announcement probably resolves the main fear that the market had in a positive light.”
