The CEO of Woolworths has announced that he's leaving the supermarket giant in September, after nine years in the top job.
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00:00 The board today, the chairman and everybody and Brad Banducci himself has said that it
00:06 had absolutely nothing to do with the events of Monday night, the Four Corners disastrous
00:11 interview where he insulted in many ways the former head of the ACCC and then stood up
00:16 and departed the interview midway through.
00:20 But it's difficult not to equate those two events.
00:23 I think it's important to realise though that that interview actually took place several
00:27 weeks ago.
00:28 It was broadcast Monday night.
00:30 It took place several weeks ago.
00:31 So the board has had plenty of time to reflect on this.
00:34 It's not a knee jerk reaction of what's happened today.
00:37 And they have conducted some kind of a search for a replacement.
00:41 They said they did a global search.
00:43 But in the tradition, I guess, of Woolworths, they found somebody internal.
00:47 They found somebody just down the corridor, Amanda Bardwell, who runs the up and coming
00:52 division, which is the online grocery division.
00:55 So it's really hard not to equate the interview and the departure on the same day.
01:01 This comes at the same time as the company has posted its results.
01:04 The numbers are a bit confusing.
01:06 What's going on?
01:07 Well, look, there was a massive write down of the New Zealand business.
01:10 New Zealand is in recession at the moment and the company has written off or written
01:14 down the value of those businesses.
01:16 So that's impacted the results.
01:18 So the results about a $780 million loss with those write downs.
01:22 But very profitable business Woolworths is nevertheless.
01:27 And you know, for all the allegations of price gouging and profiteering and so forth, if
01:31 you look at the margins, particularly in the food business, they are increasing still.
01:37 So in this half year, the margins have increased further.
01:40 And this follows on from the margin increases that we've seen in the past 18 months or so,
01:45 which have really sparked community outrage.
01:48 So those margins are increasing.
01:49 And interestingly, a lot of the margin growth is in that new business that online, you know,
01:55 basically sells Woolworths food sales.
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