Former Ipex founder and CEO, Joel Schwalb, says he has no plans to take over the top job at Volante, one of Australia’s largest publicly listed ICT companies.

Current Volante CEO, Allan Brackin has flagged his intention to depart from the job. Schwalb, whose family company now owns 46.8 per cent of Volante, says at the age of 69 he believes he is too old to be running an ICT company. “This is a younger person’s game,” he says.

Schwalb says he also has a five-year agreement with Volante not to start up another business in the ICT industry as part of the agreement when he sold Ipex to the listed company. However, he says he is dabbling with investments in non-ICT engineering companies in Eastern Europe.

While Schwalb claims to have no direct say in the running of Volante, only the very naive would believe that he does not hold a great deal of influence at the company. Aside from being by far the largest single shareholder, Schwalb, his son Yoav Schwalb and former Intel Australia managing director, David Bolt, form a three-man voting bloc of non-executive directors on the six-man Volante board.

Volante, which last year turned over $350 million, has now built a fairly diverse stable of ICT businesses. Aside from Ipex, which is essentially a box moving business with some large government outsourcing contracts, the group has separate divisions covering business solutions, infrastructure management, brand name hardware reselling, used computer sales and a national recruitment business, Affinity IT recruitment.

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