Tommy Logtenberg, CEO of The Market
Exactly one year after the board moved to oust (the now former) MD Jag Sanger and ultimately set off a series of what can only be described as unfortunate events — including an investigation and damning finding by the Australian Takeovers Panel — The Market Herald, parent company of Gumtree Group in Australia, is now simply The Market, after shareholders voted at its AGM to change its name to better reflect the company’s “restructure as a global organization.”
In addition to Gumtree Group, The Market operates the stock trading forums HotCopper and Stockhouse, and is the publisher of a financial news website, from which the company also took its name — that’s also been rebranded from The Market Herald to The Market Online, to “bring the brand into the digital age,” according to an ASX filing.
As it happens, The Market Herald only became The Market Herald in 2019, when Sanger changed the company’s name from HotCopper Holdings. It was part of his strategy to become a financial news brand of the same standing as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal — an ambition that was turbocharged when Sanger engineered the acquisition of the Gumtree Australia business from Adevinta in 2021.
The company was soon to begin publishing a print newspaper, Sanger told media commentator Tim Burrowes on the Unmade Media podcast. A luxury vertical, Fancy, was launched to unlock “transactional synergies” with Gumtree — Sanger pointed to the New York Times’s WireCutter brand as an example of his ambition for the vertical, never mind that WireCutter’s runs an affiliate marketing business model for new goods.
That strategy, which the Australian Financial Review labeled “preposterous,” has now been completely dismantled under the leadership of CEO Tommy Logtenberg, and the company is now, wisely, doubling down on growing and strengthening its classified business by pursuing value chain services in automotive, entering transactions in the general goods segment, and so on.
“In appointing Tommy Logtenberg to the role of group CEO and managing director of the Gumtree Group, we have an excellent leader who truly understands the growth potential of our strategy focused on classifieds,” non-executive chairman Alec Pismiris said in his address to shareholders at the company’s AGM.
“While the year was one of change, the moves we have made have undoubtedly set the company up for success,” he concluded.