Book review:
RICH KIDS: How the Murdochs and Packers lost $950m in One.Tel By Paul Barry
Finished reading: 13 April 2017
This book was given to me by guests staying at our house it was particularly interesting reading given the ambitions of One.Tel are very similar to what TPG Telecom is trying to do in the Australian mobile market currently by becoming the fourth player and building their own network and buying spectrum.
The book was very well written and scintillating to read. I had heard of Jodee Rich before but not read any detail about the collapse of One.Tel. It is very interesting to identify the common themes that were present in both of Jodie Rich's listed company collapses; Imagineering and One.Tel.
The key points I got from the book were that people do not often change and the misrepresentation and deceiving tactics that Jodee Rich used at Imagineering were almost exactly replicated at One.tel a decade later It also shows how smart people can be deceived and if you become too close to a situation you fail to make rationale observations that would be obvious to an outsider.
The One.Tel collapse also highlighted the speculative nature of what was happening in the market during the dotcom boom and the terrific paper wealth that investors had made, but in reality not much real wealth was being created.
What surprised me was that Jodee Rich was not punished for his role in the company and how he still has a business life in Australia today despite losing investors billions of dollars and deceiving some of the most sophisticated investors in Australia.
Conclusion
I enjoyed the book thoroughly and would recommend it to anyone who is wanting a background on the Telco industry in Australia and management deception. It highlights the risks around businesses that are in hyper growth mode and shows how they can unravel just as fast.
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