Corporate Travel’s CEO Jamie Pherous faces fight to steady company amid accounting scandal

Corporate Travel founder Jamie Pherous liked to compare himself to a prostitute when he met fund managers at the Macquarie Conference in Sydney.

He said the investors, usually rich white men, would shuffle in and out of his hotel room over a short period of time and he had to impress them — in any way possible — in order to extract as much money from them as he could.

For years, Mr Pherous’ unusual pitch worked. As fund managers bid shares in his travel services business from a $1 initial public offer price in 2010 to more than $30 in 2018.

The investors shrugged off Mr Pherous’ playboy lifestyle which included a holiday home in Aspen regular heli-skiing trips in Alaska, and a four-storey, $20 million riverside mansion in New Farm, Brisbane, with two swimming pools.

The travel group even survived the COVID-19 lockdowns, as it pivoted into organising hotel accommodation for thousands of illegal migrants to the UK, in what became the nation’s hot-button political issue over the summer of 2025.

Accounting scandal

But last Friday, it all unravelled for the Brisbane native, AFL Lions fan, and father of five boys.

The golden run ended after his company was forced to host an investor call and admit it had overcharged clients, including the UK government, by up to £77.8 million ($156 million) between financial years 2023 and 2025.

It warned that its accounts still cannot be trusted.

The $2.3 billion travel agent’s shares were first suspended on August 26 this year, after it hinted at the brewing accounting scandal.

Last week it warned it does not expect shares to return to trade until an unknown time in 2026. It may also have to issue a new prospectus disclosing all its issues to convince regulators it’s suitable to return to trade.

Mr Pherous’ institutional shareholders and analysts have been forced to slash their valuations of the travel agent that last fetched $16.07 per share on a $2.3 billion valuation.

Broker, Shaw & Partners cut its valuation on the stock in half to $7.60 and said investors should sell if they could.

Given Corporate Travel warned its auditor may uncover more accounting problems, the uncertainty around when, or whether, it returns to trade is high.

“It’s too early to say exactly what refunds will be due,” the company’s chief financial officer James Spence told an analyst call on November 28.

Short seller troubles

Corporate Travel previously ran into trouble in 2018, when it was the target of a sustained short seller campaign by hedge fund VGI Partners. The naysayer was betting on Corporate Travel shares falling as it doubted the company’s accounting and pointed to discrepancies in timings of cash inflows and outflows.

The duel between the company and its short seller critic regularly played out in the financial media.

The doubters were led by Doug Tynan, who went on to co-found acclaimed hedge fund GCQ Partners in 2021.

GCQ reportedly still holds a short position in Corporate Travel and Mr Tynan has been regularly in the business media over the past week rubbishing the travel group and its accounting.

Curiously, The Nightly can reveal Mr Tynan’s GCQ Partners has itself been the target of a mystery critic in 2025 named Market Viper.

The investigator alleged Mr Tynan’s GCQ reset the performance of its flagship GCQ Flagship Fund in July 2022 to boost its own performance returns in front of investors.

GCQ Funds Management conceded to The Nightly it now only publicly reports the performance of its GCQ Flagship Fund from July 1 2022, even though the fund was launched to wholesale investors under an A class of units, amid a bear market, on February 1, 2022.

It said the decision to only publicly report the superior performance from July 1, 2022, is because this is the date it launched the P class units to retail investors, rather than the A class to wholesale investors.

Whoever it is targeting GCQ is a reasonably sophisticated investigator, although there’s nothing to suggest they’re linked to Corporate Travel.

KPMG continues its investigations

For now, it is consultancy KPMG that has been tasked with continuing its investigation into the sin-binned travel group’s accounts. So far, KPMG has turned over 47,000 documents and 1.5 million sale or transaction purchase lines.

Governments in the UK and Australia have also demanded Corporate Travel come clean about what’s been going on to provide reassurance it can be trusted.

As a typically ebullient Queenslander, Mr Pherous has no doubt it will get back on track. “We remain focused on reliable delivery and quality service, as you’d appreciate we have long standing and trusted service with our current clients,” he told analysts last Friday.

“Just to reinforce this is isolated to a number of clients impacted in the UK, we’ve met with those proactively, so it’s a big business all around the world and we’re really focused right now on how we continue to offer that great service and that’s where we’re at.”

Others like Mr Tynan insist the end is near for Mr Pherous and his unusual approach to running a global travel business.