CIO Tony Clasquin abandons Gartner and BankWest

Beverley Head
Thursday, 19 November 2009 08:33

IT Industry - Market

Tony Clasquin couldn’t have chosen a more public forum in which to trumpet the news that he was leaving his position as CIO of BankWest than the Gartner Symposium currently being held in Sydney which has over 900 of Australia’s leading IT managers attending.

Delegates attending Clasquin’s scheduled presentation this morning, when he was slated to speak on the topic “Ensuring effective change management while replacing core systems” instead found themselves being addressed by a couple of Gartner analysts. The Australian Financial Review had reported in this morning’s edition that Clasquin had circulated emails yesterday announcing that he was leaving BankWest.

His departure seems somewhat hasty however as a Gartner spokeswoman confirmed that “Tony Clasquin pulled out yesterday at the request of BankWest,” and Clasquin’s talk was still being advertised to Gartner delegates this morning. He is also understood to be only part way through a planned 12 month review of BankWest’s information technology systems which was intended to deliver significant savings for the Commonwealth Bank which bought BankWest last year for $2.1 billion.

A BankWest spokesman confirmed that Clasquin would be leaving the organisation shortly. Calls by iTWire to Clasquin’s office have yet to be returned.

Clasquin’s speech had been billed by Gartner as one of the highlights of the conference. According to the spokeswoman his presentation was pulled even though “he was not going to be speaking about the company anyway but rather the CIO role, his career and CIO challenges.”

According to the programme Clasquin was to have discussed: “His experience in replacing core systems, which can be expensive and time consuming and can only be successful with effective change management.”

With hindsight the statement that: “In this session Tony will discuss the obvious, unravel the complex and share some secrets for success and survival” seems almost prescient. Delegates will be sad they missed the insights.