|  John
Cassidy is a down-to-earth person whose common sense and great
community spirit have seen him become a huge influence in the
New England district of New South Wales. When John sold his major
shareholding in the Sydney-based construction company Abigroup
three years ago, he had plenty of money in the bank and an enviable
reputation as an elite businessman which saw him recently honoured
by his peers with a prestigious industry award.
Since returning
home to “Merilba” at Kingstown, west of Armidale, with wife Annette
in 1996, John has redirected his problem-solving talents to help
create and build capacity on an individual, community, educational
and business level. At its simplest, it is the Cassidys making
their 18m indoor heated pool available for swimming lessons for
Kingstown Public School children to save them the 90-minute round
trip into Armidale.
At the next level, it sees him help establish the New England
Conservatorium of Music with a recurrent funding stream from the
New South Wales Government and underwriting a $4 million debt
enabling the New England Girls School (NEGS) to have a new lease
on life. Both institutions are perfectly suited to the regional
city of Armidale with its old buildings and traditions in the
heart of the New England district.
In the bigger picture,
the Cassidys have achieved spin-offs from consolidating a large
and successful agribusiness running Merino sheep and South Devon
cattle. And John, as Chancellor of the University of New England
(UNE), continues to create a sound educational and economic future
for this institution. On a family level, John and Annette educated
their two children, Emma and Johnny locally, and have backed his
nephew Shaun’s family in setting up a cold-climate vineyard and
winery on adjoining land. They are also surrogate parenting another
teenage nephew and two teenage nieces who are the children of
John’s deceased brother.
A civil engineer
and Fellow of the Institute of Engineers, John uses networks and
contacts across industry and political groups to provide effective
leadership in the local community. His diverse activities in the
New England represent an emerging trend in Australia which has
seen successful businessmen transferring their considerable influence
in financial, positional, ceremonial and personal roles from the
city to the country. This trend is well-established in business
literature in the United Kingdom and Australia, where rural and
regional leadership has shifted from historic rural landholder
families to a new breed of business elite.
Managing director
of Armidale’s Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI)
Dr Arthur Rickards says John is highly influential in the New
England community. ABRI is a business associated with the UNE,
and Arthur says John, as Chancellor, is actively involved in progressing
the university at a time when regional universities are challenged
to maintain student numbers and funding. “John is very innovative,
and very determined in everything he does,” he says. “He has made
a fantastic contribution to the cattle industry, running the largest
South Devon herd in the world that is performance recorded, and
greatly influenced the overall development of the breed at an
international level. John is also an innovator in the sheep industry
and runs high performance Merino sheep.”
Looking back on
John’s multi-faceted career in construction, agribusiness and
governance, it is the ability to use logic to solve problems that
is his key to success. John’s interest in agriculture had its
roots in his first business venture, going rabbiting as a young
boy with his father then selling rabbits for “five bob a pair”
and rabbit skins for 100 pence a pound. The rabbit fur is used
to make famous Australian Akubra hats, although these days the
fur is sourced from other countries as well. “We love the realness
of the work we do in the country and the realness of the people
who live here,” John says.
John and Annette
searched for a large area of land that was relatively inexpensive
and in need of developing, and purchased “Merilba” in 1982 after
being inspired by its beauty and history, which includes having
been a Cobb and Co staging post in 1854. When they moved to the
district, the neighbours said it takes 25 years to become a local
but John laughes at the fact that there are now few locals because
he’s steadily acquired much of the land in the valley from neighbours
who have moved on.
“Merilba” is a
magnificent property that has been expanded from 8000 to 30,000
acres, and is complemented by 5500 acres at Ebor, further east
in high rainfall country. Annette manages the administration and
accounting side of the business. The property is well-watered,
pasture improved land running 8000 merino ewes with 17-18 micron
wool. It runs a further 28,000 sheep, 2000 cows, 5000 boer goats
and produces 3000 tonne of hay and silage annually to be self-sufficient
in fodder. John has Old Flaggy Mountain fenced out for conservation
of native fauna and flora including timber species such as cypress
pine, ironbark and stringy bark.
In typical John
Cassidy style, he identified South Devon as a productive but less-established
breed, and proceeded to import fresh genetic stock from New Zealand
which he then backed up by personally funding the development
of cross-bred genetic analysis conducted by ABRI. “South Devons
are very feed efficient, they have the highest growth rate of
the British breeds of cattle, high butter fat content in their
milk, are ranked number three in marbling cattle of the world,
and have a 10 percent higher bone-out ratio of meat to bone than
most other breeds,” John says.
Five years ago
he used embryo transfer technology to bring the bare-bottomed
Finnish Landrace sheep genetics into his Merino flock to reduce
the costs of production and remove the need for mulesing. This
innovative breeding program has not only created sheep with clean
heads and tails, the bonus is in having naturally polled rams,
large-framed sheep with brighter wool and longer staples (now
back to 17 micron wool), as well as improved fertility with lambing
at 150 percent under commercial conditions.
John says engineering,
which he studied at the University of New South Wales and Newcastle
University, taught him a sense of logic and planning that he applies
to all aspects of his life. When he and Annette moved home to
“Merilba” for John’s first retirement, it lasted only three months
before he was lured back to city business and eventually oversaw
a management buyout that remains the most successful in Australian
corporate history. He was asked to help sort out the Abigroup
and went on to take over a major shareholding in the business
in 1988 when it was a publicly listed company with a turnover
of $120 million and 126 employees. When he left in 2004, it had
grown almost 10-fold into a business with $1.1 billion turnover
and 3200 employees and was sold to German multinational group
Bilfinger Berger.
It is the stuff
of fairytales that when he took over Abigroup, the shares were
trading at 3c/share and when he sold it they were worth $4/share.
Using the existing social capital, John restructured Abigroup,
promoted people who he thought had the necessary skills or could
quickly acquire them and put them into senior positions. “Abigroup
had people with a lot of skills, they just needed redirection
and motivation,” he says. Based on this and other successes, John
was awarded the 2005 Services to Construction Award by the Australian
Construction Association for contribution to engineering projects,
as a worthy employer, for business success and expertise and experience
in projects (gained overseas and in Australia). He is also a life
governor of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and, with
chairman Neville Wran, raised $3.6 million at a dinner in the
Sydney Superdome (now Acer Arena) in 2000 when Abigroup owned
it.
Perhaps John’s
greatest leadership assets are a sense of humour, can-do approach,
and high standards in taking responsibility and instilling confidence
in others. He takes a helicopter view to see the big picture and
visualise the future, then uses insight, contacts and problem-solving
ability to enable changes to happen. “In Australian business,
people can become complacent and mediocre in their outlook and
expectation, but I like to get in and do things. Working in Indonesia
taught me many things, foremost of them being that anything is
possible and there is always a solution.”
John is currently applying these techniques
to New England’s leading educational institutions, first as a
UNE Councillor before being elected to the office of Chancellor
in late 2003, and more recently as chairman at NEGS. He is working
to position UNE as a $150 million/year business selling education,
and steering the university to focus more on its key strengths
as a regional tertiary teaching and research institution and a
soon-to-be-introduced rural medical school. “The world is competitive,
and universities have to become competitive,” he says. “The whole
university sector is now becoming more business focused as it
strives to comply with new Federal Government protocols.”
John became involved
with NEGS indirectly through his nieces who attend the school
and have flourished in its supportive culture. But the future
of NEGS was under a cloud last year until John initiated a plan
to take over the church-schools’ debts and restructure and reinvigorate
this historic educational institution. The school faced near-certain
takeover by PLC (Presbyterian Ladies College) until John stepped
in as its white knight, underwriting its debt to enable the creation
of an unlisted public company NEGS Limited.
Under the arrangement reached with the Diocesan Council of Armidale,
all land and assets belonging to the school have been transferred
to NEGS Limited, which now runs the school as an independent business.
John’s vision is for the school to have up to 600 students in
three to five years’ time (currently there are just under 300).
Armidale veterinarian Dr Hugh White led the fight to save NEGS
as P&F president at the time and is now working closely with
John as deputy chairman of NEGS Limited. Hugh describes John as
a lateral thinker who has a habit of coming from left field, catching
everybody by surprise. “John considers all viewpoints, weighs
things up, makes a decision and then goes with it,” he says. “He
is widely involved in the community and has brought a breath of
fresh air into the university, restructuring it on to a sound
financial footing, while he and Annette are also involved in rural
community.” Annette laughingly says that John’s supposedly retired
but in reality he’s probably as busy as ever spending time on
NEGS or UNE and other interests.
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