With the closing of TBI Malang, Luke Preece has brought TBI into unprecedented disgrace. The JV partner had invested hundreds of millions of rupiah in the project and the decision to break their venture with TBI cannot have been taken lightly. It is a sign of how utterly Preece has dragged the TBI name through the mud with his inept and vindictive style of management that the partner would rather go it alone than fly the TBI banner over the doors any more. A week ago there were six group schools managed by TBI Head Office: now there are five.

In an even bigger slap in the face for the hapless and disaster-prone Preece, the joint venture partner has asked the former TBI school manager, GA, to stay on and manage the new school. Despite all of Preece’s attempts to get the guy fired (and there were rumours that Preece had finally claimed GA’s head a couple of weeks back), Luke’s attempted assassination attempt on yet another TBI manager has blown up in his face and he now has the ignomy of having lost TBI one of its schools, along with over 2 billion rupiah worth of revenue per year. In the end GA has trounced Preece, leaving the South Australian con-man with a lot of explaining to do to his USG mistresses (Mariam and Ning).

I imagine that Luke Preece believes that we are desparate to see him fired. This is not necessarily the case. Over time we have come to rank his management skills so poorly that we believe that he is a kind of wrecking-ball of malice and incompetence swinging around inside TBI. If you look at his record of massive failures at Riau, Bekasi and now Malang, it is clear that he is nothing but a liability to TBI. Perhaps another couple of years in this role and he will have lost every TBI and some more ethically and responsibly managed schools will have grown up in TBI’s place. Perhaps someone else will yet be able to rush in and clear up the mess Luke has made; but its is looking late in the day to salvage this stuff-up. We will have to wait and see. In the meantime, his embarrassing series of blunders has now reached comic heights.