The most hated woman in NZ and Aussie?

[Marc]

The most hated woman in NZ and Aussie - maybe so...

Click here

Cheers

marc

[eri]

this ties up with that wellington company that lost the contract for making rainwear for the army

apparently ozzie co. hard yakka has the defence clothing contract and is now sourcing it's clothing from china instead of locally

big savings, why she got the big bonus and big layoffs, why she gets the hate mail

still i would have thought pauline hanson, sharon salt? and that 1 woman crime wave being deported back to nz from oz would more correctly be called the most hated women in the antipodies

though hated is a strong word, i'd prefer "least popular"

[mattnz]

When I read the title, my thought was Pauline Hanson.

[donna]

The Government has to turn that army deal around - that's just outrageous. Why is that Aussie company controlling the outsourcing? That is just plain mud on your face for the Government I reckon. No wonder workers are deserting NZ - they have to go to Oz to get a crack at being involved in local Kiwi business!

Cheers,

Donna

[Davo36]

Yes but that would mean going back to "the bad old days" of protectionism. You know when NZers owned NZ, owned our own assets like power lines, imposed tariffs on imported goods etc.

This is what the rest of the world does. They say they are an open economy but they have all sorts of tarriffs and subsidies in place to protect themselves.

I once went to a business seminar where the presenter described NZ as a whore laying back naked, spread eagled and saying to the rest of the world "Treat me nicely!". Well some countries do treat us nicely and some don't. And they're all happy with our no tarriffs position!

David

[Marc]

Sue Morphet, Pacific Brands CEO, tells of hardest fortnight

By Stephen Lunn - The Australian - March 14, 2009 12:00am

FOR a woman who has become the face of corporate excess across Australia, Sue Morphet is not a product of the usual CEO cookie-cutter.

No MBA, no stint at McKinsey, no old boys' network. Morphet, Pacific Brands' chief executive, spent her first years in the workforce teaching science to Catholic secondary schoolgirls in her home city of Melbourne.

Married, with two children by her mid-20s, she went into the family bakery business after her father died, wholesaling Bird's Country Mill bread mix.

She has written a cookbook that sold 75,000 copies, owned a milk bar and built a plum-pudding business with a million-dollar turnover. All before moving to Pacific Brands in her mid-30s after her third child reached school age.

Thirteen years on, she sits in her office in Hawthorn, atop the company home to Bonds undies, Sheridan sheets, Dunlop Volley OC sandshoes, Yakka and Berlei. Facing her are a mountain of difficulties.

"Without a doubt the hardest thing I've done is to set that ball in play two weeks ago to tell 1800 people their jobs are going," Morphet told The Weekend Australian in her first interview since then. "And I'm not going to be the only (company chief). It's just that we're so public."

Announcing Pacific Brands' half-year results on February 25, Morphet said 1850 workers would be laid off over the next 15 months and almost all domestic clothing manufacturing stopped.

The workers were shocked, the unions representing them livid, prompting calls for boycotts of Pacific Brands products.

When the sackings were juxtaposed with Morphet's pay rise from $685,775 a year to $1.8 million on taking the chief executive's job in January last year, the flames were fanned further. Talkback radio boards lit up, politicians pounced. Sue Morphet: poster woman for the fat cats.

"It was pretty terrible," Morphet says. "But I've got a good family, and we were fine. We didn't find it easy, but we were fine. But I think the hardest part was that a company of 9000 employees who are so proud of what they do ... felt they were being turned against. They didn't deserve that.

"They felt this company was being pushed and shoved by what I would call a small extreme element, and I felt uncomfortable about that."

Morphet is wary when talking about herself, animated when talking about the company's future. "I've got a well-paid job, I acknowledge that," she says. "I was given a promotion and therefore I was paid more.

"It doesn't make it terribly easy for those losing their jobs to understand that."

Pacific Brands' decision to abandon manufacturing in Australia was inevitable with or without the financial crisis, Morphet says. She had no choice but to bite the bullet and cleave the unprofitable clothing manufacturing sector away in one hit.

"It's a clear competitive disadvantage for us to be carrying on clothing manufacturing in Australia, unfortunately. The alternative was to take a little bit here, a little bit over there. But I felt that was the worst way to do it.

"If there's going to be change that's going to impact on people, you need to be upfront and let them know, even though if we'd done this in small under-the-radar numbers we wouldn't have had nearly the drama."

Not everyone is convinced about Morphet's formula to reinvigorate the company. In a research report written for clients on February 25, the day of the company's announcement, Merrill Lynch consumer analyst David Errington said: "We believe it is probable that the enterprise of PacBrands will trend toward the value of its debt, meaning the equity value (share price) ... could soon be close to zero.

It is a vote of no confidence in the executive team led by Morphet. But the chief executive is banking on the company emerging leaner and stronger.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/business/stor...45-462,00.html

Cheers

Marc

[Green Fish]

She's a greedy fool, but aren't the protests misdirected?

As a union man (gulp) recently pointed out, this is Feltex all over again. Three years ago, Pacific Brands was purchased by a "private equity" organisation. The phrase "private equity" is the biggest misnomer in the English language. It's "private debt", with zero equity (if that).

The protesters should camp outside the homes of the shareholders and of the banks that lent them the money. This Morphet person is just a dumb patsy.