Therese Rein’s big win

Much was rightly made of the fact that Therese Rein was forced to sell the Australian arm of her work placement business Ingeus back in 2007 when her husband Kevin Rudd became Prime Minster.

It just didn’t seem right that a highly successful businesswoman should be forced to sacrifice a business she had built up over many years just because her husband got a new job – and one that only lasted three years.

However, selling the Australian arm of Ingeus has allowed Rein to focus her attention on the British market – and it’s paying off in spades.

According to a report in The Australian, earlier this month Ingeus and its joint venture Deloitte won seven contracts to provide work placement services to the British Government over the next five years.

According to the report, the joint venture will have about 23% of the $4.63-$7.22 billon the British Government will spend on work placement services in the next five years – more than any other two providers combined. That could deliver the joint venture more than $1.2 billion in total, or $284 million a year.

Turnover at the company was estimated at $145 million in 2009-10 on SmartCompany‘s list of top 30 female entrepreneurs, released earlier this year. The new contracts should provide a significant boost to revenue in the coming years.

While Ingeus may well have won these contracts had Rein retained her Australian operation, it should be pointed out that Britain is a much better place to be in the business of work placement right now.

With unemployment rates falling in Australia, demand for work placement just isn’t as high as it is in Britain right now, where unemployment is running at almost 8%.

Britain’s Conservative Government has also effectively created an industry by building a work placement system that pays a success fee for every unemployed person who can be placed in a job, and then stays in that job.

There’s no such industry being created here – by being in the UK, Ingeus is arguably at the right place at the right time.

Was it fair that Rein was forced to sell her business? Absolutely not. But fortunately for one of Australia’s best entrepreneurs, that cloud has had a lovely silver lining.

The SmartCompany team will be taking a well-earned break over the Easter long weekend and will resume publishing on April 27. We hope all of our readers have a chance to recharge the batteries over this holiday period.