Gattung's`no-holds-barred' memoir due out in March
Former Telecom chief executive Theresa Gattung's memoir will be published on March 12, the publisher says.
Random House says the book, Bird On A Wire, is being promoted as "no-holds barred" in its account ofher 11-year career at Telecom.
Ms Gattung was aged 37 years when she was appointed chief executive in 1999, taking over from Roderick Deane, who became chairman.
She headed the company from 1999 to 2007 and once infamously admitted the company had used confusion as a marketing tool to maintain profit.
The job gave her an international profile and she was named by Forbes as one of the world's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2006. Now the chairwoman of Wool International, she has said women need to break into the boards of big agricultural corporates in groups to make a difference.
"Storm the Bastille and get on the shareholders' council, but get in as a group and not one or two because it is too easy to be picked on," she told women in the dairy industry.
Research showed that unless a group had 30% of the seats on the board of a company it was difficult not to be marginalised.
Though in 1999 she called for "bold moves that reposition the company for the next 10 years," Telecom's share price fell from around $9 to less than $5 under her tenure, while shareholders' equity fell by more than a third from $2.16 billion in 2000.
Commentators have said that under Ms Gattung, Telecom could have made huge concessions to the government and still left its shareholders better off, and that her handling of that regulatory relationship was a major factor in the losses suffered by investors.
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Comments and questions14
To the best of my knowledge, we poured just on $30,000,000.00 down her voluminous throat for absolutely nothing at all....other than a big red hole.
At least the over-paid female at the Ocker bank got herself a job in the cruise industry....although that's just what she a Deane turned Telecom into, when you think about it!
Enter her in the Guinness Book of Pathetic Disasters....that's the only place she deserves to be in print.
Seriously, who gives a rat's about that woman? She was absolutely USELESS & merely a puppet to the USELESS Telecom Board of Directors, during her rein.
Thnak goodness she has gone for good & a man is back at the helm, who actually knows what to do & has the relevant experience.
If Ms Gattung's handling of that regulatory relationship was a major factor in the losses suffered by Telecom investors, how come the share price is only $2 to $3 now?
When Ms Gattung took control of telecom its share price was around $8 when she left it was around $2.50...... And how many millions was she paid to loose all this money again?
If she was any good she would have been offered a number of top jobs in NZ and internationally but she hasn't - or directorships.
I can't see many buying her book - we already know she is a loser
I'm still trying to work out how she got the job in the first place...
ditto comment posted by pg
the arrogance of even thinking a book of such drivel is worth reading..., particularly when written by a women with clearly a huge chip on such a small, angry, pointless, self absorbed ego-freak who contributed nothing .... will speak volumes through pages of probably the same.
we'll not be rushing to the stores for this one
pg: special favours rumour has it. apparently not much good though.
I could write a 5 volume book on Telecon and that woman myself.
Remember this???
"Think about pricing. What has every Telco in the world done in the past? It's used confusion as its chief marketing tool. And that's fine,"
"At some level, whether they are conscious of it or not, customers know that that's what the game has been, they know we're not being straight up." TG
Good luck to the Wool Board. Does any company really deserve such a mole?
Gattung / Rankin, ? am i confused ??
pgnz. i'd rather get favours from rankin though.
"Storm the Bastille and get on the shareholders' council, but get in as a group and not one or two because it is too easy to be picked on".
If this cow ever turned up near my interests the Guillotine is sharpened and ready.
Gattung left TNZ with a depressed shareprice , regulated by the guv'mint and woefully short on infrastructure deployment --which the new CEO has done a fine job of addressing.
She was also paid out around $5M when she left.
At a time when I was at business school and wobbling out into the workforce, having a woman at the helm of the biggest company in New Zealand made a huge difference.
The gender split was roughly 50:50 in our lectures and we girls never once thought there was such a think as inequality in the workplace. Theresa was a shining light of "you do the work, you get the job." Ann Sherry at the helm of Westpac, Dame Sian Elias as Chief Justice and Helen Clark as Prime Minister backed up this theory, followed by Gattung ranking at 23rd most powerful women in the world by Fortune in 2006.
So what's happened?
Archival analysis indicated that of a total of 1366 corporate directors, women constituted 88 (6.44%) directorships. Women held 64 non-executive (4.69% of total directorships), 23 executive (1.68% of total directorships) and one alternate directorship. The findings indicated that there were only five women CEOs and only five out of a total of 240 New Zealand corporate boards achieved gender equality. Women on NZ Coporate Boards 2008
1.68% of executive directorships!
So when Gattung comes out criticising the low-level of scrutiny the current CEO is receiving and addresses the issue of pay parity, there's a little more to it than 'sour grapes'. I don't blindly endorse leaders because I have the same plumbing as them and I certainly think Gattung made errors in the top seat. I do think she has unique experience and hasn't received the credit she has deserved. There are challenges that are unique to women, it's looking at the figures and realising that things are out of whack.
Good work Theresa.
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