Jeremy Philips to leave Photon
Jeremy Philips, the CEO who brought Photon Group back from the brink is to leave the company.
In an announcement to the ASX, the company said that Philips would work with the board to achieve a smooth transition to a new leadership.
Philips – who joined the company after working for News Corp in the US – oversaw a recapitalisation and sale of many of the group’s companies as debt threatened to overwhelm it.
Despite being a much smaller group – whose agencies include BMF, BWM and Naked Communications – Photon now appears to be back on firmer ground.
In the ASX statement Philip said :”Now is an ideal time for me to hand over to someone else.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Well played Jeremy!
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I must confess – I wasn’t convinced anyone could get the Photon debt mountain down at all, let alone as quickly as Jeremy and team have done it. No idea what he plans to do next, but he deserves a lot of kudos for the achievements at Photon.
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Less focus on what Jeremy has done (sold a heap of assets to pay off debt) more focus on the whole sordid story of photon.
Many people who actually generated revenue and profit through their individual companies and were promised so much got so little in return. Their years of hard earnt success stand in stark contrast to the photon group which did not create any value and yet walked away with some quite nice little pay-packets.
lesson for everyone
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You’d have to say he’s helped Photon dodge a bullet; I am surprised he didn’t stick around for longer.
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Anyone want to wager that he is on his way back to News Corp ? Short odds that he will soon be working with Kim Williams ….
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Let’s not forget that Jeremy didn’t single-handedly save Photon from the brink. Photon paid something like $9 mil to its merchant bankers and lawyers to execute the recapitalistion, and it also hired Craig Hart to oversee the field marketing division, which got gobbled by Navis. Let’s not even discuss Salmat, who had reportedly courted Photon several times before Philips even started as CEO.
Equally, Philips isn’t single-handedly responsible for Photon’s 40% decline in value in the past year. He’s arguably made the smart choice to depart now – but you have to question why so soon, especially given that he got paid circa $4mil and owns 4.8% of Photon shares plus presumably millions of future options? That’s not a great sign of confidence.
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Not really an achievement at all – he’s basically operated as a liquidator flogging off assets.
Under his reign the share price plummeted from over $1 to 5c today. The recap was at 10c so its lost 50% even since then. And the management rewarded themselves with healthy pay packets last financial year, despite this.
I am amazed the Board are still there particularly given some of the ‘interesting’ contracts during that internet company Geekdom days – ‘selling’ loss making Geekversity, buying a number of worthless domain names for millions and Dark Blue Sea at an astronimical price!
What a debacle.
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@Scotty
in fairness to Jeremy, your statement makes it sound like he was largely responsible for the decline in share price – the shit hit the fan as soon as he came on the scene (I.e.: he walked into a shitstorm)
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