Incoming Westpac chair Steven Gregg
Following a ten-month search for a new chairman, Westpac yesterday announced it will appoint a former investment banker and management consultant with deep experience in the oil and gambling sectors to lead its board.
The bank yesterday anointed Steven Gregg, the current chair of The Lottery Corporation, to take command of its board and corporate governance in December.
Gregg made his mark in executive management leading ABN Amro’s UK business after stints working in the US for Lehman Brothers and Chase Manhattan Bank.
At ABN Amro he advised on some of Europe’s largest mergers and acquisitions in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In the last decade he has made a deeper impression overseeing strategic restructures as chairman of oil retailer Caltex, stockbroker and wealth manager Austock and gambling provider, The Lottery Corporation.
Outgoing Westpac chair John McFarlane yesterday lauded Gregg as the “right leader to take Westpac into its next chapter.
“With a long career in corporate and investment banking across Asia, Europe and the US, combined with his experience chairing ASX 100 companies, Steven is a world-class executive and director who will bring a fresh perspective to the board,” McFarlane said.
“He has deep experience chairing consumer-focused companies, a strong track record of disciplined decision making and contributions to board oversight of organisations undergoing technology transformation.”
While Gregg’s resume of achievements is impressive, several institutional investors said they were surprised McFarlane had selected someone with no retail banking experience to take the reins of the company.
“They’ve gone with a man who’s got a proven record driving corporate restructures, but commercial banking is a unique business where the trade-offs between risk and reward set it apart from other industries,” one portfolio manager said.
The market response to the appointment was muted, with Westpac scrip slightly underperforming its major bank peers on a negative day for most financial services stocks.
Westpac and other major banks are coming under pressure from regulators such as the Reserve Bank to replace their legacy core technology platforms.
Gregg’s appointment might be a signal that Westpac is more advanced than its peers on developing a roadmap to genuinely replacing its ailing core systems.
In his roles at various companies, Gregg has overseen migrations from physical distribution to digital platforms.
One of the noteworthy features of The Lottery Corporation is its extensive use of over-the-counter distribution through an agency model.
The business, which markets scratchies cards, Powerball and Ozlotto across the country, generates most of its revenue through a network of 3800 agents.
Gregg said on Monday he looked forward to making “a big contribution” to Westpac.
“From my observation, Westpac is in a period of transition,” he said.
“After the hard work of simplification over the past three years, now is the time to look forward and have a strong ambition.”
In a 2018 interview with Stephen Mayne published in the Eureka Report, Gregg confessed to being a very hands-on chairman.
Gregg, at that time, was chair of Caltex overseeing a management team led by Julian Segal.
In reference to his working relationship with Segal, Gregg said: “We speak daily and often we speak many times in the day and it’s always a very constructive sort of discussion we have, so that won’t be changing I hope.”