John Croll resigns as CEO of Isentia
The boss of Australia’s biggest media monitoring company Isentia has announced his resignation.
The departure of John Croll comes a year after the company wrote off its disastrous $35m+ investment in branded content agency King Content.
In a statement posted to the ASX, Croll said: “After almost 20 years as CEO, I believe it is time for a change. I have been incredibly privileged to lead the talented and dedicated team at Isentia.
“Over the next six months I will continue to focus on implementing strategic initiatives that will improve the performance of our media intelligence business.”
Croll will remain with Isentia for the next six months while the company looks for a replacement.
Croll’s resignation comes after spending eight years with the media intelligence company as its CEO.
He was the last remaining member of the management team involved in the King Content acquisition. Chairman Doug Flynn retired from the board late last year and chief financial officer Nimesh Shah quit last March.
In October last year Croll said he was still the right person to lead the business despite the company’s share price collapse which saw the value of the business drop by 40%.
“Definitely the execution on King Content was a mistake but as we focus on the core media intelligence business, I’m one of the key guys in the industry who people look at and say ‘he’s a leader and understands where the business goes’,” Croll said at the time.
A month prior, the CEO had insisted the company didn’t over pay for King Content.
“The first half will still be be pretty flat but as we move forward with the on-selling to clients then we’ll be in a much stronger position,” Croll flagged at the time.
In its financial results, Isentia flagged it would be making a round of cuts amounting to savings of $5-7m.
The announcement:
Isentia announces resignation of managing director and chief executive officer
Isentia Group Limited (ASX:ISD) today announced the resignation of its managing director and chief executive officer John Croll.
Mr Croll has given six months notice so that an orderly transition can occur and the Board is going to undertake a global search for his replacement.
Mr Croll said: “After almost 20 years as CEO, I believe it is time for a change. I have been incredibly privileged to lead the talented and dedicated team at Isentia. Over the next six months I will continue to focus on implementing strategic initiatives that will improve the performance of our media intelligence business.”
Mr Doug Snedden, Isentia’s chairman said: “The Board recognises the significant contribution John has made to establishing Isentia as the market leader in media intelligence in the Asia Pacific region.
“John will continue to lead the company with the support and assistance of the Board until a successor is appointed. We appreciate John’s ongoing commitment to Isentia as the notice period will ensure a smooth transition to a new CEO. An external search for a replacement will commence immediately.”
Wishing John Croll the best in his new endeavours. Personally, I have worked with John since I worked for Media Monitors as a student at Sydney University in the early 1980s. It was fantastic experience as a young aspiring journalist, monitoring the radio and TV news channels four nights a week. Now, we have more recently run stories with Isentia’s CTO Andrea Walsh on our site WomenLoveTech.com promoting women in STEM. Andrea was also interviewed by Sarah Harris for our Game Changers series on GameChangers.com.au.
I have watched John grow his small family business to what it is today. When you look at John’s career, you need to look at the entire picture and it’s commendable what he has achieved. He is a man of charm and integrity.
John, good luck with your next career move.
How do you walk away from a $35 million+ loss without legal consequences?
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One bad mistake re King Content – bad buy, could see it a mile off
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$35 million write down, not loss. There’s a distinction.
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Given the entire history of the business, for the CEO to feel pressured to resign over a single mistake is the issue with Australia’s conservative leadership understanding. CEO’s are not infallible and mistakes need to be made, a CEO who can’t take risks is impotent, these of course are always easy to see in hindsight. Jack Welch blew up a factory and went on to become a brilliant leader, letting one learn from a mistake is more valuable to keep in your business, otherwise you lose that person’s new found lessons and wisdom and replace them with someone just as likely to make a mistake – no one is going to be perfect over 20 years.
However, if he truly left on his own accord regardless of the reason then good luck to him.
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All you marketing types focusing on King Content when it was never more than 10% of the business. The real demise started 10 to 15 years ago when they were spending money on all kinds of rubbish like a Chinese print monitoring system and a bunch of two bit companies when they should have been spending every spare cent on developing their internet monitoring, which they still can’t do, even now! They were even slower to adapt than News and Fairfax, which is saying something. Isentia was never well run, it was just well presented to a deeply undiscerning market, which finally saw past the porcine lipstick.
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As a CEO of a publicly listed company if you overpay for any business – whether it’s selling content or baked beans – there will be consequences. It’s just about basic due diligence really.
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