Johnathan Rubinsztein (Nuix)
Local software vendor Nuix has appointed new chief executive and chief financial officers months after the positions were vacated in June following allegations about its $1.8 billion public listing.
Filling the role of CEO from January 2022 is former Infomedia CEO Jonathan Rubinsztein, who departs the automotive software company after more than five years in the role.
Prior to his start date, Rubinsztein will be brought on as a consultant during the transition. Meanwhile, outgoing CEO Rod Vawdrey welcomed his successor and is set to oversee the top-level handover.
“There are few Australian-born technology companies that have achieved the kind of global leadership that Nuix has in its target markets,” Rubinsztein said. “Certainly, it has faced some challenges in its early life as a listed entity, yet the potential and promise of the business remains enormous.”
Indeed, those challenges include a potential overstating of the company’s sales forecasts ahead of its listing, according to The Sydney Morning Herald , which led to the departure of Vawdrey and former CFO Stephen Doyle in June.
Its Sydney office was also searched by authorities seeking documents in relation to an investigation into the affairs of an unnamed "individual” later that month. The vendor claimed at the time that, as far as the company understood, did not relate to any allegation of wrongdoing by Nuix itself.
A month prior, it terminated a consultancy agreement with co-founder Anthony Castagna, which in turn followed an investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, which reportedly found an apparent six-year gap in Nuix’s records .
Nuix chair Jeff Bleich claimed the appointment “is an important moment in Nuix’s history, and Jonathan possesses an ideal set of qualities to lead the organisation into its next chapter”.
“He brings a deep understanding of our requirements and opportunities, and a successful record of steering an ASX listed entity through a period of transformation and growth,” he said.
Those qualities stem from nearly 30 years in IT businesses, which, in addition to his time at Infomedia, include founding Red Rock Consulting prior to it being sold to UXC and then subsequent acquisition by DXC as well as RockSolid SQL, as well as spending time as a consultant at Accenture and A.T. Kearney.
In addition to his new role, Rubinsztein will be taking up an intended non-executive director position for an unnamed “smaller company in the technology services sector” if its planned initial public offering (IPO) is successful, Nuix stated.
Meanwhile, Chad Barton, who was brought on as an interim CFO to fill the gap left by Doyle after the former CFO's role was terminated by mutual agreement, was promoted to a permanent position.
Days after Doyle left, the company announced the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) was conducting an investigation in relation to the former CFO, to which Bleich said he was “genuinely disturbed” by the allegations.
In the 2021 financial year, Nuix saw its profit sink by 107 per cent, causing it to end FY21 with a $1.6 million loss.
