Cocaine, ‘The White Party’ and a boys’ club: Former employees speak about the Catalano work culture

Years before Antony Catalano made headlines, charged with assault, false imprisonment and making threats to kill a woman, he oversaw a “boy’s club” culture at real estate listing company Domain, in which female colleagues were routinely referred to as “doll” and “babe” and cocaine was flagrantly abused at work events.

Catalano has long been regarded as a charismatic renegade among the more established corners of corporate Australia, delivering a brash brand of entrepreneurialism as his career has followed a remarkable progression from journalist to real estate boss and media mogul.

Friday’s charges – in which Victoria Police accused Catalano of dragging a woman around an apartment by her hair and ankles and swinging a clothes iron at her head in an alleged assault that left her with a broken coccyx – shocked some sectors of the business community.

While Catalano’s fate is yet to play out before the court, a swag of his former staff and colleagues have come forward to share their experiences working in the organisations he has led.

A former Nine senior executive who worked alongside Catalano said his past bad behaviour in the workplace had never been called out. “Now he has risen through the ranks, he’s too dangerous and too powerful to speak out against.”

Of a handful of men and women who spoke to this masthead, none would do so openly, given fears of retribution from within the real estate industry and from a posse of Catalano loyalists.

Catalano’s meteoric career rise – he sold a rival real estate publication back to Fairfax Media for $35 million just three years after the company had made him redundant – has been trailed by complaints about a sexist workplace culture. That culture was only intensified in 2015 after Fairfax bought out the rest of his Metro Melbourne Publishing for $72 million, merging the MMP team with the Domain Melbourne office.

By 2017, concerns about cultural issues reached Fairfax Media’s senior leadership, right as Domain was set for a blockbuster float. Senior executives were forced to carefully consider whether the man who had turned the $2.2 billion tiger was the right person to lead an ASX-listed company. They decided he was.

But in the months ahead of Domain’s float in 2017, the permissive use of drugs at sales events and roadshows in Melbourne had become an open secret.

A run of complaints from about a dozen staff were lodged, and with the encouragement of some members of the executive leadership team, escalated to the board. Among them were concerns that the sexist workplace environment meant women were advised not to go on roadshows out of town because their safety could not be guaranteed.

Another complaint described watching a female boss being belittled and patronised by a senior executive, and of having to warn females to be wary of the office Christmas party given the number of men who did not respect women properly.

The Domain Christmas party that year was called “The White Party” and was held at Melbourne’s Emerson Hotel before it kicked on to a hotel room nearby.

In the wake of that party and official complaints before the board, Domain chairman Nick Falloon had a brief chat with Catalano in which he told him the complaints would need to be investigated fully.

Catalano wasn’t having it. He reportedly denied all allegations and declared he was resigning anyway to spend more time with his family.

Falloon declined to comment for this story.

Catalano entered a rehab facility on Tuesday, leaving him and his media adviser unable to access his phone for further comment.

Within two months of the float, Catalano was gone, leaving behind well-documented reports about cultural issues at Domain.

What followed was a concerted effort from Domain’s senior executives to rebuild the culture and values of the company.

A former Domain manager said she was only surprised to hear that Catalano was granted bail on Friday, given he has a clear criminal record.

“I mean, spare me. How many times has he been charged with drink-driving?”

Twice. The first was in 2012 in East Melbourne, when Catalano returned a blood alcohol level of 0.09. However, the charge was later dismissed because on the night, Catalano had to be taken to hospital with chest pains before a second breath test could be taken, and his lawyer later argued that the blood sample taken in hospital was done illegally.

Two years later, he was charged again after blowing 0.08 in Sorrento after initially refusing to undergo a breath test until he was examined by paramedics, given chest pains. He was later found guilty of drink-driving, having his licence cancelled for 16 months and fined $500.

In more recent years, according to some in Catalano’s inner circle in Byron Bay, his drug use has descended into a rampant coke and ketamine addiction. These issues began to spill out into his home life. Past business associates told this masthead that in the past two years, Catalano had become increasingly aggressive and erratic.

Catalano’s relationship with his wife, Stefanie, had also become increasingly tumultuous. The couple briefly separated last year, but recently held a celebration in Byron Bay to mark their 14th wedding anniversary after reconciling.

On Sunday, Stefanie said she was “dealing with a lot right now with my family,” after news of the charges was revealed.

After Friday’s charges were laid, Catalano was no longer able to deny the scale of his problem.

In a statement, he said he had been “struggling with significant mental health and substance abuse issues” for some time.

“Those close to me have been urging me to seek professional help for some time and there have been interventions by close family and friends,” he said. “I regret not heeding their advice and I continued to believe I could hide my mental health issues.”

While Catalano’s drug use was well known among those in his inner circle in Byron Bay, the alleged violence of recent events was not known.

If he’s found guilty, “there’s no coming back from that”, said one of his former friends.

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