23 July 2008

Selling services back to ourselves for fun but not profit - Rhodium gets the axe

| johnboy
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Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has bowed to the inevitable and announced that there will be no buyer for the troubled services provider to the ACT Government (owned by the ACT Government), Rhodium.

    Since the sale was no longer viable, the ACT Government has stopped the sale process and will now move quickly to wind down Rhodium rather than short-change the ACT community on the sale of this business. The Government will take steps to ensure that the transfer to the new arrangement will be as seamless as possible for those people currently leasing vehicles through Rhodium. The Government is, of course, disappointed that a sale could not be negotiated. Unfortunate as this conclusion may be, it is a commercial reality that not all sales negotiations come to fruition; particularly when subject to such extraordinary shifts in world-wide financial market circumstances

Still, some nice work for some mates along the way and the dog to be safely buried before the election.

UPDATE: Brendan Smyth is thoroughly enjoying putting the boot in.

    “The ACT has a Chief Minister who could not run a car park at a profit, who couldn’t build a dual carriageway GDE and now who can’t sell a vehicle leasing company… Once again, the Chief Minister has failed to accept responsibility for a problem that is largely of his making – and the Chief Minister’s failure is again proving costly to the ACT.”

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Rhodium seemed a good business opportunity, but it was saddled with excessive costs and excessively ambitious sponsorships in its early phases. Better management from the start might have saved it, along with some more strategic thinking by customers and potential customers about valuing and supplying vehicles. Another ACT letdown.

Can someone please provide an honour roll of the board and executives? And the pollies who kicked it off.

Do I remember reading that potential buyers were concerned at the onerous conditions the ACT Gov had applied to the sale?

As a result, they had walked away, the business being untenable if these conditions were met.

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