Embezzlement, A painfull experience

I have come across some situations that have caused family enterprises to suffer greatly at the hands of dishonest employees. In most of the examples no one saw it coming or they fell into the trap of having blind faith in the employees or business partner.

The biggest case was a trusted bookkeeper who the business owner told me he trusted with his life and she is now facing court action over amounts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Having an external auditor is no substitute for doing your own regular checks.

I have been taken myself in a professional partnership. Our financial partner ( The accountant ) went missing one day and after a year of picking up the pieces, being sued by people we did not know, and being out of pocket by many thousands of dollars we lost nearly everything we had. He was arrested at the airport trying to sneak back into Australia and later commited suicide the week before his trail. Not one cent was ever found.

I have too many stories to tell where so called loyal employees took trusting business owners to the cleaners because the trust was misguided.

Unfortunately for many of you in business, my advice is to keep double checking no matter how much you trust them.

Bill Winter

Age is no barrier

In the Easter edition of the Financial Review there is an interesting article titled CEOs WHO NEVER DIE . They state that in the general business world, owners or CEOs of private companies are older than those in public companies. Much of this has to do with the intense scrutiny that the CEO of a listed company is under. Private company CEOs have more time and the ability to back their own judgement because thay have more control and probably, more passion.

I have come across many successful private company CEOs who are in their late sixties and seventies. This can also be the cause of frustration for the next generation who are in management positions and in probably in their fouties and wonder ( or hoping ) that the old fella will give it away. We carried my own father out at 72 with his boots on.

Try telling that to Gerry Harvey ( 67 ) , Frank Lowery (76), Lindsay Fox ( 70 ) , John Gandel ( 72) etc etc....

In many smaller companies one of the reasons for the older leaders hanging in there is because the next generation are not interested in staying in one spot for too long and they do not want to work the hours their parents did.

The fact that those who are in their sixties and seventies are still there is what is keeping them fit, alert and heathly.

It a case of the old saying Use it or lose it . If you retire too early and stop using your brain you will most likely end up many sitting in nursing homes not knowing or careing what day of the week it is.

Also remember that experience and knowledge equals wisdom.

It will be interesting to see how many of these equity buyout perform over time being run by the spread sheet gurus. It's all about short term gain.

Bill Winter