Who we are
Our story
Wattlestone was established in 2015 as a private investment group owned by Andrew Northcott.
Our portfolio spans across the energy, business services, financial and real estate sectors actively acquiring and operating businesses for the long term.
The core strategy of Wattlestone is to acquire or create new opportunities that are well positioned for profitable, long term growth and success, whilst focusing on developing and aligning top tier management to ensure enduring success of each group business. Wattlestone, leverages its proven systems and processes, Wattlestone Business Systems (WBS), to gain operational efficiency and promoting real time data driven analytical decision making. Our passionate and driven community of leaders are at the center of our existence and operate in a true meritocratic environment.
The forward thinking, systemised and disciplined approach by Wattlestone drives industry leading innovation, creating significant efficiencies and low cost operating models through our group businesses with a long established reputation for an absolute focus on the customer experience whilst maintaining the absolute highest of standards of professionalism, integrity and operational excellence.
The Wattlestone management team leverages prior management experience, our proven Wattlestone Business Systems and an extensive global network to successfully perpetuate the enduring success of the group businesses.
Our people
Andrew Northcott
Chairman
Andrew Northcott is the founder and Executive Chairman of Wattlestone having started multiple successful business ventures across a range of sectors including workforce management, technology, agriculture, tourism and real estate.
Alex Dignam
Chief Executive Officer
Alex is a corporate finance and capital markets executive with 17 years experience gained through various roles at Deutsche Bank and UBS Investment Bank. His most recent role prior to joining Wattlestone was as Managing Director, Co-Head of Equity Capital Markets at UBS for Australia and New Zealand. Throughout his investment banking career, Alex worked on over 130 transactions, advising small, mid-cap and large companies in relation to acquisitions, divestments, capital structure changes, equity and debt raisings as well as equity derivatives spanning a broad range of sectors, including industrials, financials, infrastructure, energy, resources and real estate.
Liam O’Sullivan
Financial Controller
Liam brings over a decade of experience in financial management and accounting to his role as Financial Controller. His most recent role was Manager in Deals, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), London where he assisted both Corporate and Private Equity by providing analytical insights across the deal lifecycle.
With a strong background in managing complex financial operations, Liam has been instrumental in driving financial strategy, ensuring compliance, and enhancing operational efficiencies across Wattlestone.
The Wattlestone Name
The Wattlestone name represents Wattlestone’s proudly Australian and Queensland home. The Golden Wattle is represented on the Australian Coat of Arms supporting our proud Australian roots and is native to South Australia the birthplace of generations of the Northcott Family with the first Queensland Wattles landing in South East Queensland just as the Northcott family landed in 1991. The Golden Wattle is the highest yielding of all Wattles and was exported to the northern hemisphere in the mid-1800s to protect the farmers assets and crops as wind breaks.
As there are many forms of valuable Stone’s, this represents the many facets of the Northcott Family’s operations with the commonality of being down to earth, strong, resilient, valuable, evolving over time and enduring.
Andrew Northcott, born in Adelaide and raised in Brisbane, began his journey working on a large cattle station north of Julia Creek before starting his first business at university with just $800 and a laptop. Today, as the founder and chairman, Andrew, alongside the great team at Wattlestone continues to develop and invest in industry leading opportunities.
Our vision & values
To create significant value with an emphasis on maximising the potential and ensuringthe enduring success of the operating businesses and assets through a forward thinking, innovative, disciplined and meritocratic environment.
Our core values are the essence of our existence.
ENDURING SUCCESS
Building something of significance that will endure.
FLY WHEEL
Momentum is everything.
EXCELLENCE
We aspire to be the best at what we do.
PASSION
We share a common passion and inspire each other.
HUNGRY & HUMBLE
We are quietly confident and openly humble.
PARTNERSHIPS
We work only with people whom we like, respect and admire.
LEARNING
Continuous learning and education is at our core.
UTILITY GENERATION
Remain patiently opportunistic and achieve great things.
INNOVATION
Innovation is core to our DNA.