Crikey

There’s more staggering instability today at the troubled Suncorp Metway bank, the Brisbane-based insurance and real estate company.

The two most senior managers of its LJ Hooker real estate business have quit mysteriously, without any explanation to franchisees, or to shareholders.

In fact there are suggestions that the resignations happened without at least one board member being told.

In a memo to franchise owners yesterday, acting CEO Alan Lambert said:

Dear Franchise Owners,

Please be advised that Warren McCarthy, Managing Director and Angelo Nicholson, General Manager, have stepped down from their roles.

The Chairman of Hooker Corporation Limited announced today that I have been appointed as Acting Managing Director. To all intents and purposes it is business as usual.

If you have any questions please call me to discuss.

I am working closely with the Board to ensure the continued smooth operation and success of the LJ Hooker business and will provide a further update in the coming days.

Kind regards,

Alan Lambert

Acting Managing Director
LJ Hooker International Operations

The two resignations are understood to have happened a week ago today. And yet the company has been unable to announce the departures.

They follow to more easily-understood decision of the company’s CEO John Mulcahy to quit after a sharp profit fall in the December half year linked to bad debts around poor property loans. The bank’s Chief Financial Officer, Chris Skilton, is departing after the company finds a new CEO. He is acting CEO but doesn’t want to remain.

It’s another problem for the company’s board and chairman, John Story, who really should be on the same bus as the CEO out of the company.