The Surf Industry’s Worst Month Ever

by The Editors on September 28, 2012

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The Australian has a great Fred Pawle overview of all the dire news that’s been clogging the surf blogs lately, describing what could make September 2012 the worst month even in surf business ever.

The turbulence began on September 17, when news leaked that Rip Curl, the iconic multinational surf company founded in Torquay in 1969 and still mostly owned by surf buddies Brian Singer and Doug Warbrick, had been quietly placed on the market. Their subsequent press release gave only vague reasons for the sale. Requests from Inquirer for an interview were declined. . . Three days later, in a reflection of the business world’s appetite for equity in surf labels, one of two offers from venture capitalists for Billabong, the Gold Coast multinational struggling to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, was withdrawn. The other, from TPG, is half the value of a previous offer made earlier this year. . . On the same day, New York law firm Levi & Korsinsky announced it was investigating “compensation to certain executives” at Quiksilver, another Australian-born surf label, now listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Turns out that even though Quik’s loss increased from $9.68 million in 2010 to $21 million in 2011, CEO Bob McKnight’s salary increased from $2.91 million to over $10.2 million. We wouldn’t mind a 300% pay increase year over year, would you? Click the link for the rest.

[Link: The Australian]

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