REA Group Australian CEO Departs
March 2, 2009 by Emma Sorensen
propertyportalwatch.com has heard that the REA Group and its Australian CEO, Jamie Pride, have parted ways.
Jamie was with the company for less than a year.
He joined the business in April 2008 and was responsible for all Australian operations across five brands: realestate.com.au, realcommercial.com.au, property.com.au, realholidays.com.au and hubonline.com.au.
Prior to joining REA Group, Jamie was based in Singapore for four years as the Vice President, Asia Pacific Services at Salesforce.com and Director, Asia Pacific Services of Red Hat Software. He has also held management positions at Veritas Software, Fujitsu and Cisco Systems – one of the world’s leaders in the development of internet protocol (IP)-based networking technologies. Jamie also holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Physics and a Masters of Management.
Sources tell propertyportalportalwatch.com that Jamie’s departure is effective immediately.
The news comes after the REA Group posted increased revenues for the first half of the Australian financial year. Despite a challenging economic climate, the Australian part of the business is still the engine room of the international group, and delivered $73 million or 80% of revenues – a year on year growth of 33% and a 6-month growth of 11%.
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Over the last 6 months, the REA Group has made a series of interesting announcements. Last year the Group exited its allrealestate.co.nz business in New Zealand, reduced investment in HubOnline and sold the Clarke Computer business to Rockend. Now they have closed their European Corporate Development team, in their half-year report announced a "focus on profitable revenues", and last week restructured the business. With operations in 10 countries and historically a global growth strategy, do these announcements signal a change in direction?...
- Another Loss for REA Group
Another member of REA Group has just left the team - Daniel Bignold, head of residential for realestate.com.au. ...
- Jeremy Philips New REA Group Director
REA Group Ltd has announced today that Jeremy Philips has been appointed as a non-executive Director of the company....
- REA Group Announces 47% Net Profit Growth but No Dividend
The REA Group today announced $11.4 million in first half profits, a year on year growth of 47%. Underlying this growth in profit was a year on year growth in revenues of 28% to $91.3 million. The key driver of this growth continues to be the Australian business, which delivered a 26% year on year increase in revenues and a 40% increase in EBITDA. However, while operating cash flow was $10.2 million, the Directors again failed to declare a dividend. While on the surface these look like strong results, especially given the economic environment, a closer look reveals that revenue growth appears to be slowing. The business may be in for a tough second half of 2009....
- REA Group Director Steps Down
Alasdair MacLeod is stepping down from his position as director of REA Group. MacLeod's departure follows the mid-January announcement that he would be leaving his position as managing director of News Ltd's Nationwide News. REA Group is 60.7 percent owned by News Ltd, and MacLeod is the son-on-law of Rupert Murdoch, head of News Ltd's parent company News Corporation. REA Group runs leading Australian property portal realestate.com.au along with Italian portal casa.it and portals in France, Germany, Luxembourg, and Hong Kong. MacLeod joined the board in February 2003....
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Would the last person to leave REA remember to turn the lights off!
Interesting that there is no announcement to the ASX of Jamie Prides departure. (As at 12pm, 4th March, 2009)
As Pride was in charge of 80% of revenues for the group, appeared on the investor page, and also, Pride’s appointment was announced the ASX; it seems interesting that there is no announcement when one is probably warranted.
Instead, there is announcement that another News Ltd appointed director joins the board of REA.
From watching the REA-Group.com investor page, the following people have disappeared recently: Dave Platter (Public and Corporate Communications), Anthony Herman (Co-CEO Italy), John Hart (Group Sales and Marketing).
A quick look around the countries of the group and we see:
1. Jamie Pride, the CEO of Australia is gone with no apparent replacement.
2. The Acting Co-CEO of Italy is gone, from a position which has been vacant for around 6 months (according to how long Anthony Herman was on the investor page. Only the Italy CFO is listed now. Tough job to do both CEO (acting) and CFO for such a long period).
3. The REA Group have had trouble filling the position of Country Manager Hong Kong since Andrew Taylor departed. Douglas Mulcock was originally appointed to the position, having reportedly only spent one day with the company.
It appears that there is considerable change occurring at the REA Group, with perhaps the absence of key management positions.
[...] announcement comes after REA Group parted ways with its Australian CEO, Jamie Pride, earlier this [...]
Another News Ltd appointment. AJ you make some very interesting and valid observations – I wonder what their plan is now?
Pretty easy to guess News Ltds plan and intentions……….full ownership of REA Group then they won’t need to worry what “nosey parkers” are commenting about in blogs.
Maybe the new director is gearing up to move back home and head up the online News Ltd stable
………..and the guys they have recently shed have counterparts scattered through the newspaper offices in Australia who have less and less to do as print shrinks.
“nosey parkers’ = REA shareholder here.
In recent months I am getting more timely information from Blogs than from announcements to the ASX.
AJ,
last Wednesday REA lost three staff memebers with 25 -20 years joint time at the company.
1 x long term Tech manager
1 x top line Sales rep
1 x National Manager from http://www.realcommercial.com.au.
While all left on good terms, add those to the list you mentioned above and you get a hell of a lot of human capital for a generally young business to lose over such a short period of time.
I think the business got very fat over last cple years probably beyond being efficient, a bit like ninemsn.
Time now to refocus on whats important,looking after the customer both consumer and agency.
AJ,
It seems fairly obvious that the REA CEO, not to be confused with the Australian CEO who just exited is pulling in the reins of the overseas businesses. As you stated the vast majority of horsepower comes out of the Australian business be it revenue or people.
The people who have left were really not that influencial in the big picture of where it seems Greg Ellis wants to go. I believe he is cleaning up the model that was set up by the previous regime and aligning it with where the current global economy sits which is play to your strengths and consolidate that.
We all are aware that the realestate.com.au site leaves a lot to be desired and innovation and the agent / consumer experience needs some work so thats what needs to happen. Dig a bit deeper and have a look at the CV’s of the people who are coming on board. They know their stuff. People leave as highlighted by Paris in her comments but often that is not a bad thing as new eyes and ideas come in.
From what I have heard the new CIO is very sharp and aligned with a need to vastly improve both the site and all of the systems that support it which would be a large improvement on what he inherited from the scattergun approach adopted by the previous person who never got anything finished.
Domain are getting their act together on the technology front which is a real challenge now for REA. Fortunately for REA they still hold the Sales high ground as Domain tend to turn salespeople over faster than anyone and have no stable leadership in that department (6 GM’s of Sales in 3 years).
What agents want is proper competition and I think Domain are shaking the tree a bit but what you will no longer see is complacency from REA as they now realise they have to improve their image, their delivery and their service to agents.
As an agent who has to be on both sites and who can’t see another portal emerging in the short term I want to see an improved REA site with better experiences for both my office and my customers. From Domain I want the same face coming through the door each couple of months (I’ve had 7 sales reps in 18 months) as they have to remember I’m a Real Estate Agent and my success is based around good long standing relationships. I might not like REA and their site but I’ve had 1 sales rep for more than 2 years and she is a huge asset because she understands my business and my staff and my customers.
One year on from here it will be interesting to see if anyone has listened.
Wow Craig, I’m impressed with the time you have as an Agent to do this amount of due diligence on your vendors. Do you have similar insights into the other vendors in Australia? Or do you just reserve that for a company who is paying your paycheck?
[...] Sources tell Property Portal Watch that last Friday the REA Group internally announced a restructure around the concept of being an Australian business with international investments. It appears that the corporate and the Australian teams have been merged and all international operations are now reporting into the GM of International, Shaun Di Gregorio. (Management Bio’s) These changes put into context the sudden departure of the Australian CEO, Jamie Pride. [...]
Craig A,
I have been pondering some of your comments.
“Dig a bit deeper and have a look at the CV’s of the people who are coming on board. They know their stuff.”
What I noticed from reading the REA Group investor page are people with extensive experience at Sensis. When I research Sensis, I start to get concerned.
1. Justlisted – this was Sensis’s online property play. The venture failed to get traction in the marketplace, with Sensis finally outsourcing the Justlisted offering to domain.
See: http://www.business2.com.au/2007/08/01/domain-and-justlisted-get-into-bed/
2. Yellowpages – the Yellowpages business is/was Sensis’s flagship site. However, Sensis lost ground to Google in terms of search capabilities and mapping. The solution for Sensis was to again outsource, this time to Google.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/sensis-concedes-defeat-to-google/2008/11/03/1225560716428.html
These two examples are interesting as Sensis could not compete in the online property advertising market (justlisted), and in the case of Yellowpages, lost a leadership position through not making timely technological/infrastructural investments. In both instances, external companies were brought into save the venture/s.
Why these facts are interesting, is that the people from Sensis are now at the REA Group.
Craig A, given your assertion (you appear to have considerable inside knowledge) that the IT systems at REA are in disarray due to uncompleted deployments, how do you see the experienced team from Sensis being able to navigate what they ‘inherited’ and create a solution.
Or should we be expecting some kind of announcements about outsourcing to Google or other providers?
We can see that you are correct, in that Greg Ellis is making changes. The number of people from Sensis and World Directories is growing.
The REA Group share price is performing good at the moment, thanks to cost cuttings and the closing of Group businesses. This is pleasing.
What I am concerned about is longitudinal growth and stability.
How will the group achieve revenue growth projections of 50% year on year, when they are closing businesses? (Note: It is important to not confuse Revenue with Profit)
Further, with all the cost cutting measures being adopted (which is excellent when executed prudently and responsibly), how will the REA Group be able to address their IT issues, and do they have the right people in place to execute?
Craig,
One other observation from your post.
“From Domain I want the same face coming through the door each couple of months (I’ve had 7 sales reps in 18 months) as they have to remember I’m a Real Estate Agent and my success is based around good long standing relationships. I might not like REA and their site but I’ve had 1 sales rep for more than 2 years and she is a huge asset because she understands my business and my staff and my customers.”
Whilst you applaud your ‘relationship’ with REA, and are dismissive of domain’s ability to have stable sales reps – you still none the less advertise on both websites (if not more).
So having a relationship with a website is obviously not paramount when it comes to making sound marketing decisions. And it is evident that neither portal needs to have an understanding of your business, in order for you to do business with them.
This being the case, I am curious as to why you bring it up!
I think the point is Sensis lost the plot about 4 years ago after Andrew Day went to World Directories and took a lot of the talent with him.
Sols dreams of sensis having huge growth havent materialised due to the fact the management didnt understand the Internet opportunity.
Snoop, I think it is wrong to think that Sensis don’t understand the internet, I have worked there and understand the culture. The problem is the elephant in the room that is the Yellow Book. Currently the book still is the major revenue generator for Sensis and making their internet products actually useful could be a case of biting the hand that feeds them. They are not yet ready to take the risk.
Yes always a tension.
What Tls should have done is fund properly the creation of a competitive business unit focused 100% online and created some natural competition.
If this Portal was run as well as REA was run it would be killing yellow now with massive margins and the other cld be just shut down.
A lawyer running Sensis doesnt make for smart .com strategy in my view.
Yellow pages clutter apartment building foyers and are used by many as monitor stands.
This business wil go the way of newspapers very quickly.
Good comment, Snoop.
The head of Sensis was formerly a partner at Mallesons (solicitors) and the General (Legal) Counsel for Telstra. Not a lot of classifieds, portal work, SME interaction or even good old print ad sales experience, going on there!
Wrt the farce that was ‘Justlisted’, let’s not forget who actually got them into that ridiculous business in the first place. It was a dog constructed by someone who didn’t know the industry to begin with and didn’t change its spots when ‘massaged’ by the ‘experts’ at Telstra/Sensis/Trading post. Oh no, let’s not begin on Trading post. By the way, you might like to track down where various Sensis personnel who have made cock-ups along the way have been rewarded. e.g. Citysearch was being run by a ‘bird’ who was involved in making strategic decisions on Sensis ‘Real estate’. The head of this little group journeyed over to SEEK but didn’t last long! Blah, blah, blah.
[...] MacLeod’s resignation follows two other REA Group departures during 2009: general manager for international business, Shaun Di Gregorio, and Australian CEO Jamie Pride. [...]