The executive chairman of SAI Global says he won't be in the running to become the new full-time chief executive as the company tries to return to normal after scrapping the remainder of a sale process.
"I will not put myself forward as a contender," Andrew Dutton said.
He said there is no time frame for the arrival of a new chief executive, but the recruitment process has started at SAI. The quality assurance and compliance company was trading at $5.20 a share after an initial buyout proposal first emerged in May but has slumped 30 per cent in the past few weeks.
"We've begun the process and I can't give you a definitive time," he said.
The SAI board on Monday revealed that offers for parts of the business had not been compelling enough for a part-sale, and the entire process has now been terminated.
"None had value and certainty," Mr Dutton said of the proposals for parts of the company. He would not reveal how close the valuations of those part-company offers had come to the board's internal benchmarks.
He also refused to confirm that the would-be buyers of parts of SAI were trade buyers and competitors, saying "that's commercially sensitive".
A fresh announcement on Monday that it had scrapped the second phase of the process follows SAI revelations on September 17 that it received no final bids for the whole of the company.
SAI will now carry on as normal and pursue its own cost saving and restructuring plans after a distracting period of almost six months.
But Mr Dutton said most of SAI's 2500 staff had been focused throughout the uncertainty brought about by a potential change of ownership.
"They largely kept their focus dead on their job," he said.
In mid May Mr Dutton was catapulted into the position of running day-to-day operations as well as being chairman, after the shock exit of former chief executive Stephen Porges who had been in the job just four months. There has been speculation in the past few months that Mr Dutton may have coveted the chief executive job on a full-time basis, but he has strenuously refuted this.
A buyout by private equity company Pacific Equity Partners valued the whole business at $1.1 billion and joined forces with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts later in the process. But the duo did not make a final, binding bid for SAI.
Mr Dutton said it was clear SAI was better off continuing in its current form and pursuing its own strategic plan including restructuring, cutting costs and removing silos between the three main divisions.
"In the absence of any compelling proposals, it is clearly now time for the company to return to its own plans for growth," Mr Dutton said.
British-based Skillsoft is thought to have been one of the bidders for SAI's compliance division.
Mr Dutton was evasive, however, on Monday about speculation of a falling out between SAI and its former parent Standards Australia and the specifics of a renegotiation of a vital contract which makes up a large chunk of SAI's profits.
"We're confident that we'll continue to work together," he said. "We'll continue to grow with them."
One of the question marks that had been hanging over the sale process centred on uncertainty around the Standards Australia publishing contract, which gave SAI the right to sell and publish 6900 sets of standards and regulations in a variety of industries.
It pays a low royalty rate of 10 per cent to Standards Australia as part of an agreement struck in 2003 when SAI was floated onto the ASX by Standards Australia.
Standards Australia was a late entry into the sale process and wanted to try and submit a bid with a partner if it was granted more time, but that didn't occur. It is also pushing for a higher royalty rate when the publishing contract is renegotiated before 2018.
