Shareholders wanted PEXA chief’s head (Rear Window)In announcing...

Shareholders wanted PEXA chief’s head (Rear Window)

In announcing Glenn King’s departure last Wednesday from the e-conveyancing monopoly he’s led since 2019, PEXA chairman Mark Joiner couldn’t have been more laudatory about how the CEO had “transformed” its prospects. King’s “singular purpose and successful strategy” had “set up the company to deliver”, Joiner gushed. Some of PEXA’s institutional shareholders would beg to differ. PEXA’s share price got a nice bump in May off the revelation of what it describes as a “verbal commitment” from British lender NatWest to use its platform. But some shareholders weren’t appeased. In fact, around this time, several institutions took advantage of the regular check-ins with the chairman to raise their concerns about the CEO and his strategy, doing all they could to hammer the need for leadership change. The way they saw it, the company suffered from the opposite of the “singular purpose and successful strategy” its chairman lauds King for exhibiting. Key gripes included the still optimistic UK expansion, its “off-strategy” acquisitions, and the underperforming digital solutions business. Some have since sold out of the stock. Often lost in all of PEXA’s beefing with productivity tsars or its use of hefty lobbyists is that this is a mandated monopoly that runs at a loss. It was $18.2 million in the red in FY24, which is an improvement on the $23 million it lost a year earlier. No wonder it’s fighting so hard to keep a lid on its near-total servicing of the country’s $800 billion e-conveyancing market. Given the closeness between King and Joiner, few believe King was pushed. Still, his unexpected departure – to be finalised once a replacement is found – does throw up questions of how PEXA will change under new leadership. Would the new CEO, for example, have the chutzpah to warn Australia’s big four banks against sharing information with a regulator? Would he or she make simultaneous enemies of two state governments? Or prompt dire grumblings from Assistant Competition Minister Andrew Leigh, who told this publication a few months ago that PEXA’s behaviour was that of a “textbook monopolist”. Those familiar with the business describe King as a command-and-control type surrounded by a small cadre of loyalists, many of whom worked for or with him at National Australia Bank. First among these executives, known internally as FROGS (short for Friends of Glenn), is chief financial and growth officer Scott Butterworth. At the full-year briefing, King made a reference to his great leadership team, in which there were “none better” than Butterworth. This was read by many as a clear sign of who he thinks should replace him. The King is dead – long live the king.

(That bit I've highlighted is quite a zinger)