Multi-billionaire Richard White’s early career was famously rock n roll as a guitar technician for AC/DC, but over the past month his life story has become more Shakespearean, with a sprinkling of Streisand effect, that’s taken the WiseTech Global founder from the business section to front pages amid lurid details of his personal life.
It began two months ago as a legal battle launched by the WiseTech CEO, who applied to bankrupt wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan, who spent $92,000 on furniture for a $13 million house in Sydney’s eastern suburbs that White had allegedly bought for her as her “forever” home.
She successfully applied to garnish the funds from White’s bank account in April last year. In August, after having the garnishee order set aside, White launched bankruptcy action to recover the money.
When the details emerged earlier this month, a spokesman for 69-year-old White said the legal action involved an “unresolved commercial debt arising from various cases run by Ms Rogan against Richard and costs and court orders made against Ms Rogan in those matters”.
In response Rogan alleged she’d been in a sexual relationship with White, and sought to have the bankruptcy claim dismissed in the Federal Court, with her lawyers calling it “an abuse of process”.
Rogan made a range of salacious allegations in her Federal Court claim, including allegations of a sexual relationship that began on a trip to New York in 2022, “to fulfil the promise he would invest in my business”.
The matter was settled on Monday, with Rogan’s legal team filing a discontinuance notice.
“Ms Rogan has withdrawn all her allegations, and the parties are not pursuing any further court action,” a spokesperson for the WiseTech boss said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Given this was a personal matter Mr White has settled to avoid any distraction from his primary focus which is on implementing WiseTech’s growth strategy and continuing to create value for its shareholders and customers.”
But the spark in that dispute has turned into a bonfire around White over the past fortnight, amid ongoing questions about his professional behaviour that have wiped billions in value from the ASX-listed company (ASX: WTC) and his personal fortune.
The board has backed White, who owns around a third of the company he founded 30 years ago, saying it was a personal matter as more details of the dispute with Rogan emerged, along with other relationships.
The Australian reported last week that a woman in her 30s had an “advice for sex” relationship with the billionaire earlier this year, but it ended when his now-wife intervened.
On Monday, the Nine newspapers detailed a new series of allegations about the tech billionaire’s personal life, including a previous relationship that resulted in White submitting a statutory declaration to a WiseTech board subcommittee denying allegations by the woman before the matter was settled and the allegations withdrawn in 2021.
The Nine report also alleged that in conversations with several female entrepreneurs on social media and elsewhere, White had used suggestive or crude language. He was labelled “the LinkedIn lecher” by one of the women.
The story also detailed corporate governance concerns by the board over a $2.7 million salary for the company’s former chief growth officer – double the CEO’s pay – with some directors wanting the remuneration disclosed in the annual report.
The Nine story relied on several anonymous sources with purported close ties to the business and its founder.
WiseTech shares fell nearly 15% on Monday, slashing $6 billion from the logistics software platform’s market capitalisation and an estimated $2 billion from White’s personal fortune.
The board issued a statement to the ASX in response, saying it was: “currently reviewing the full range of matters raised in today’s media reports and is actively seeking further information and taking external advice” and will continue to meet regularly to consider and monitor the situation.
In the meantime, White, who became a Tech Council of Australia board member in June, has withdrawn from his public commitments for the industry lobby group and will not speak at the National Tech Summit next month.
Over the past 4.5 years since short-seller J Capital drove down WiseTech shares to $12 in March 2020 with a report headlined “WiseTech may be the first corporate death from Covid19”, the software business has seen its share price rise 10x to hit $139 last month, making White a very rich man in the process.
He’s worth around $10 billion. The cost of the furniture at the centre of the initial dispute represents around 0.00092% of his wealth.
As a percentage of an Australian worker’s average income of $92,000 a year, it would be 83 cents.
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