Richard White, the embattled founder, chief executive and major shareholder of Australian tech giant WiseTech, has stood down from the company “with immediate effect” after weeks of damaging revelations about his personal life hammering the company’s reputation and share price.
In a Thursday statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, WiseTech’s board said it agreed to White’s request to leave the company he founded in his basement in 1994 and turned into a $36bn global logistics software behemoth.
“The board has agreed, following Mr White’s request, that he will stand down as a director and as chief executive with immediate effect, take a short period of leave, and transition into a new role with the company that he founded and has led for 30 years,” the board said.
“When Mr White returns from leave, he will commence a new full-time, long-term consulting role, focused on product and business development.”
For this role, on a 10-year term with the title “Founder and Founding CEO”, White will be paid $1m a year.
Following a dispute with a former lover erupting in the federal court, and multiple women coming forward to allege he bought them houses and invested in their businesses in exchange for sex, White said he remained committed to WiseTech.
“It has been a challenging time for me personally, my family and close friends, and for the company that I have built and truly love,” he said in a statement.
“I want to assure all those who have supported WiseTech, as customers, colleagues, and shareholders, that I remain absolutely committed to seeing this incredible organisation continue to thrive and grow in the coming years.”
White did not comment on the personal scandals that have emerged about him, first in the federal court and then in a series of media revelations.
But WiseTech’s board has ordered an independent inquiry into specific allegations against White raised in recent reportage. WiseTech Global’s chair, Richard Dammery, said “recent weeks have been challenging and uncertain ones for our people”.
White’s departure from the company he founded marks an extraordinary fall from grace. For three decades, Richard White was WiseTech Global. The billionaire entrepreneur liked to talk about the company as one he “created from scratch” in the basement of his home, as an institution he “cares deeply about”.
But his private life – away from the company – appears to have brought it all crashing down.
Lurid allegations – in court and in the media – have wiped billions from the company’s market capitalisation and an estimated $2bn from his personal fortune.
Richard White, a former musician and refrigeration engineer, does not meet the tech entrepreneur stereotype: he lives in an off-the-grid luxury compound in the largely working-class Sydney suburb of Bexley where he grew up. His first job was as an 11-year-old washing dishes at a function centre run by his grandparents. He once fixed guitars for AC/DC and The Angels.
But this month, a different side of the “local-boy-made-good” narrative has emerged.
White’s personal travails first came roaring into public prominence in a bizarre federal court bankruptcy case. Linda Rogan, 52, alleged in court that White sought a sexual relationship with her in exchange for investing in her Bionik Wellness business in Sydney’s east.
Rogan alleged White offered to help her with her business, offering a salary of $1m, before inviting her to New York where he had booked a single hotel room.
“I realised that Richard expected me to enter into a sexual relationship with him to fulfil the promise he would invest in my business. So I stayed with Richard in his suite and our relationship became sexual,” she said in court documents.
Court documents state that, in the course of their relationship, he secretly bought her a $13.1m mansion in Vaucluse.
Rogan has alleged White told her to work with an interior designer to furnish the property, but that she was locked out of the house when White’s partner, Zena Nasser, found out about the relationship.
Rogan told the federal court she was left with the bill for a suite of luxury furniture, including a $10,000 mattress and outdoor love seats. She successfully sought garnishee orders for about $91,000 to be taken from White’s bank account.
In retaliation, White commenced bankruptcy proceedings against Rogan, a move she claimed was “actuated by malice”.
After days of damaging reports, that case settled abruptly and confidentially this week.
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But it has been replaced with a series of scandals and other claims about his business and personal life in media stories that have further shaken the confidence of some of the company’s largest investors.
White is alleged to have engaged with female entrepreneurs with messages and on social media, making offers of professional support and mentorship that shifted to more suggestive comments.
Nine newspapers this week reported Nasser, White’s partner, applied for and then withdrew an apprehended violence order against him in 2021.
After Rogan’s allegations were aired in court, a Sydney psychologist, Jenna Riches, gave an interview to the Australian newspaper saying she had a sexual relationship with White after she contacted him on LinkedIn. When they met in Sydney, he gave her a bunch of flowers with a sex toy inside.
Riches said her relationship with White ended abruptly after she was contacted by Nasser and told to keep away from him.
The increased focus on White’s private life has also led to details of his historical relationships being made public.
The Australian also reported White bought a house for another businesswoman he was allegedly in a relationship with.
Nine newspapers also reported White had a years-long relationship with an employee of WiseTech, and gave her a waterfront home worth $7m – a gift declared to the company’s board.
Dammery has met with major shareholder groups, ahead of a feared revolt at the company’s annual general meeting in November. Rachel Waterhouse from the Australian Shareholders Association told the ABC that while WiseTech’s board had expressed confidence in the company’s leadership, retail shareholders were “concerned around succession planning” and the impact of the ongoing revelations about White on the share price.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission deputy chair Sarah Court told a Wednesday press conference the corporate regulator was aware of the allegations against White.
“We are aware of it, and are monitoring it, but I’m not going to comment any further at this stage,” she said.
Nine on Thursday reported that former board member Christine Holman resigned from the board in 2019 over concerns about the management of the company, including White’s behaviour. In a resignation memo to the board, reported by Nine, Holman accused White of “sustained intimidation and bullying”. Fortune reported later on Thursday that Holman had not replied to further requests for comment.
WiseTech, a logistics software business whose main product is CargoWise One, a cloud-based end-to-end logistics execution platform, was floated on the Australian stock exchange in April 2016, valued at about $1bn. It now has a market capitalisation of $35bn.
WiseTech’s spectacular growth has driven White’s personal fortune to about $10bn, but the reports this month have cost him an estimated $2bn personally.
WiseTech’s share price is down more than 25% this month, but is still up more than 65% over the past year.