Page 28 - Australasian Paint & Panel magazine Jul-Aug 2021
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News • In Focus
            PAINT&PANEL JULY / AUGUST 2021
  THERE HAS BEEN A GREAT DEAL GOING ON AT AMA GROUP OVER THE LAST FEW MONTHS. SAM STREET LOOKS AT SOME OF THE RECENT PERSONNEL CHANGES AND LITIGATION DEVELOPMENTS AND TALKED TO BOTH THE FORMER AND CURRENT CEOS.
AMA GROUP UPDATE
              A
 MA GROUP HAS TOLD A COURT
it will enter early mediation in its lawsuit against former CEO Andrew Hopkins that alleges he owes $2.4 million in unauthorised ex- penses and repayments on an outstanding loan. The parties agreed to mediation in mid-June with an outcome expected by
the end of September.
Paint & Panel talked to Hopkins in June
when he maintained that he had done nothing wrong, and that in fact AMA owes him money and not the other way around. He said he wants nothing more to do with the company and is selling all of the buildings that he owned that were connected with it. He sold his 5.5% share holding for $24m back in February.
Since Hopkins left there has been a mass exodus of the senior management team: Steve Bubulj CEO panel division; Peter Bubeck chief commercial officer; Jim Titmuss chief procurement officer; Dave Calder chief operating officer; IT director Shane Hunter; Dave Fantom group commercial officer; Mark Reid business development manager and chief financial officer Stephen Harding- Smith, chief financial officer Steve Beck- er as well as Darren Maloney the acqui- sitions director and a significant chunk of the HR department.
Hopkins said that he had a succession plan in place before the conflict with the board. “I had set up a succession plan because it was time for people to grow in their roles - Steve Bubulj would have got my job, the whole business would have shuffled around. We had a lot of acquisi- tions lined up for this year and a lot of organic growth with insurers. They will never be able to buy panel shops at 2.5-3 times profit like I did,” Hopkins said.
“There’s never been another AMA in this country and there never will be again. In the UK there are 10 consolidators and in the US there are five or six large consolida- tors. There was only one in Australia be- cause all the talent was in one company, all of the expertise to run a large MSO panel business. Now that whole team has left and they are in the market so there will be a lot more consolidators in the fu- ture, more start ups - which will give the insurers more options,” Hopkins said.
“The bodyshop managers are the kings of the business and many of them have left. When it comes to senior managers how are they going to replace them? It took me 12 years to assemble that team and I know the industry inside out.”
I asked Hopkins if he would think about starting out again in the industry: “I love the industry, I love the people,”
he said. “I don’t know - let’s see what the future holds. Never say never.”
Carl Bizon, Hopkins’ successor said he wanted to talk about recruitment during the interview. He said that AMA Group employs around 3,850 staff across 181 sites. The current vacancies account for about half a full time employee for each site so it was more than manageable. He did note there was a culture of poaching in the industry. He said that the skills shortage was an issue for everyone, and that AMA was also impacted as it had previously been able to supplement its workforce with 457-Visa workers, and this currently isn’t an option.
There seems to be some confusion over the number of sites operational. In a SEEK advertisement posted on June 24 the com- pany description reads: ‘The AMA Group is Australia's largest network of accident re- pair facilities, which currently comprises of over 120 outlets and over 2,200 employees across Australia and New Zealand.’
According to Hopkins the number of AMA shops open is around 140: “There were at one time 200 stores and I would reckon there’s at least 50 closed. At 30 June last year there were 186 sites and of those I had 22 in hibernation which didn’t get opened and another 18 that got mothballed.”
         














































































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