While Virgin Australia CEO Paul Scurrah has long denied the industry wide rumours that he will ultimately be replaced by Bain Capital, by former Jetstar CEO Jayne Hrdlicka, a report in the Financial Review says he has rejected speculation of his departure, after a falling-out with private equity owners Bain Capital, sadly there is no smoke without fire and this one has been smouldering away for quite a while.
It appears that Mr Scurrah was speaking at The Australian Financial Review’s National Infrastructure Summit on Wednesday, when he said the rumours about him being replaced by former Jetstar CEO Hrdlicka had been doing the rounds for a while, but he is not going anywhere and he has never been in the habit of commenting on speculation.
Recent media reports and industry rumours though have revealed that not surprisingly Mr Scurrah has clashed with Bain Capital about the business model for the future, with Scurrah wanting to steer away from going too downmarket, but as one would imagine Bain would only be interested in maximum profit for minimum cost, having already invested massive funds in acquiring the airline. Hrdlicka is also renowned for her time running Jetstar as a highly profitable extremely low cost carrier, which it is believed by many, what Virgin Australia will ultimately become.
Hrdlicka has an interesting history as she is from the USA but from 2010 to 2012 she was a senior executive at Qantas, then in July 2012 group chief executive officer at Jetstar, taking over from Alan Joyce, which she held until July 2018 when she was appointed managing director, chief executive officer and director of The a2 Milk Company, from which she stepped down in December 2019, with some industry experts saying that she was waiting for the green light to take over at Virgin Australia, well before COVID-19 and the troubled airline hitting the wall, which simple delayed her descendance to the Virgin throne.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, in early June on a Zoom call between Bain Capital executives and a group of union leaders representing Virgin Australia’s workers, the gaping cultural chasm between the two groups became glaringly apparent, with Hrdlicka now revealed as Bain’s high profile, handpicked adviser, outlining the private equity firm’s vision to relaunch the collapsed airline and what its plan would mean for its 9,000 strong workforce, many of which have now been unceremoniously laid off after it appears a raft of unkept job promises.
It appears that Hrdlicka’s use of what the Sydney Morning Herald described as meaningless management jargon, including terms like “flexibility” and “synergies”, was completely lost on the audience, prompting one straight-talking union leader to request that the remainder of the meeting “take place in English”.
The Sydney Morning Herald says that Hrdlicka is described by some as “exceptionally charming” and by others as “robotic”, but she was a focal point for nervous unions who remember her stint at Qantas when it established budget airline Jetstar, an era when Qantas’ industrial relations were in turmoil following an unprecedented worker lockout and grounding of planes.
So Mr Scurrah you may be brushing off the rumours and nobody would blame you for doing that, but you and we all know who it looks like has the inside track at Bain Capital, so good luck!
A report by John Alwyn-Jones
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….yes to full service…. no to low cost flight…. no to mass tourism…. no to over tourism…. the pandemic was a result of over travelling…. rebooting the world and therefore the world has to start all over again…. and full service is the right start….
It appears the Virgin will be totally screwed. Lets hope REX rises to the occasion.