"Myer is a fantastic company and very much an iconic brand," he said. Myer chairman Paul McClintock (centre) doesn't have much time left to restore investor confidence. Credit:Jesse Marlow "There are great people through the company and all the stores and wider team, and I feel very honoured to have led the company since June 2006. But, as you know, it's now an opportunity to revitalise and build a sustainable business. It's the right time for me to go, because that is going to take a while, which is not on my agenda." There is much to be said, both good and bad, about Brookes' tenure running Myer. Brookes put everything on the line, including his family home, to join the private equity takeover of Myer. Having inherited a company that posted a $66 million loss under previous boss Dawn Robertson, he led the retailer's resurgence.

That period of private equity rule was the zenith for Brookes. After a decade of disastrous results, it posted earnings in excess of $250 million before Myer's float was fast-tracked in 2009. Subscribers to the float paid $4.10 a share, and the stock has demonstrated little buoyancy ever since. It closed at $3.75 on day one, wiping out $205 million of shareholder value. Brookes himself lost $4.2 million that day. After the full-year results in November, at which Myer revealed profit was down 22.6 per cent to $98.5 million, the shares slipped 20 per cent in two days. The writing was on the wall for Brookes. Still, the CEO thought he could ride it through. Just before Christmas he told friends he hoped to have one last year at the helm, to allow Umbers and Damien Bracken time to better learn the business. By February, the Myer board had decided it had different plans, and succession planning was under way. "After Christmas we put the emphasis on closing the strategy work out . . . and we wanted the leadership team to be the team that took the work through to its end," said McClintock. "Bernie told us he didn't want to be there over that time frame."

With Brookes and his CFO Mark Ashby soon out the door, a new team will have the tills and the tiller at Myer. McClintock joined the board in 2012. Umbers and Bracken have only been at the company since September last year. The pair were actually part of a three-man recruitment drive, until it was discovered that newly appointed general manager of strategy Andrew Flanagan had faked his CV. It's a well-worn adage that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It seems the new boys at Myer could learn a thing or two from history. On Monday both Umbers and McClintock kept repeating the line that they had "started with a clean sheet of paper" while drawing up Myer's new strategy. "What we are doing is taking a blank sheet of paper and looking at the nature of the people who currently shop with us will be potential shoppers in the future," said Umbers.

Myer's advertising company, Clemenger Direct, said much the same thing way in 1994, when signing on to develop Myer's advertising campaign. "Now we can start again with a clean sheet of paper," said Clemenger's founder Vin Jenkins, on inking the Myer deal. The sheet resurfaced in 2001, when Coles Myer hired John Fletcher as managing director. Fletcher, a logistics man from Brambles, was hailed by one board member as "a fresh set of eyes who can adopt the blank-sheet-of-paper approach" to running Coles Myer. Dawn Robertson missed out on the mythical "clean sheet", but seemingly wanted one. In 2005, while defending the company's new store strategy, she told the ABC: "If there was a clean sheet of paper would there be a few that you might not put up? Yes, maybe." And Brookes? He has left a clean sheet all of his own. In the past five years more than 21 senior executives have left Myer, including himself and the soon to depart Mark Ashby.

That's a rate of one every 12 weeks. Most have since forged successful careers with Myer's retail rivals. "A whole generation has gone through that company, and not one of them has stayed," said one of the departed. "The real clean sheet of paper is Bernie going, but I don't know how much that will change. Customer service, omni-channel, online retail. It's all been said and discussed before. The problems are structural. I wish the new team luck. They're going to need it."