Welcome to the World of the Turnaround CEO
NEWS
September 2025
SUCCESSION PLANNING in private or family businesses is sensitive and can be traumatic.
Unlike engagements in public companies where professional leadership is the norm, the aspirations, legacy, commitment and personalities of the founders or family members must be taken into consideration. Afterall, you are coming in as a stranger to take over all aspects of leading their dream into the future.
More than anywhere else, it is vital to listen and learn from the family. ITS A RELATIONSHIP THING.
At Thai Stair Company in Bangkok, with a host of very exciting companies including designing and manufacturing building materials, adding value to agricultural produce, formulation of specialty consumer beauty and food and health supplements, it also necessitates a broad understanding of portfolio management. Of particular prominence for me has been the roll out of the modular housing company to address house shortages with rapid to assemble, high quality, innovative designs at low cost.
ALLAN BRANCH
Entrepreneur, Technologist, Author and Turnaround CEO
SAVING COMPANIES AND JOBS
Allan's memoir, his first full length book, "The Vandemonian" is this extraordinary true life story and the tricks of fixing companies are all spelled out..
Allan is a pioneering robotics technologist, entrepreneur, writer and company turnaround executive. Allan created his startup company in Hobart, Tasmania, using technology to encourage learning and education in students, embarking on a career from the USA inventing, manufacturing and selling the world’s smartest mobile robots. Allan publishes articles and papers on technology, business and his travels, including his first pieces on neural nets and vision while still in high school. From there Allan uses his skills turning around struggling companies, saving jobs. This memoire is his first full length book. He shares his time between Hobart, Bangkok, Munich and Pittsburgh.
COMPANY TURNAROUNDS
SAVING COMPANIES AND JOBS
With dozens and dozens of successful hands-on turnarounds, Allan is unique in his guarantee to save your company, all jobs, all investments.
The opposite of a hatchet manager, bean counter or expensive consultant. With 30-years-experience hands-on leading highly stressed companies from seemingly inescapable disaster, Allan has developed proprietary tools and techniques to ensure your company is saved, all jobs are retained and commercial success is sustained. Biotech, fintech, agritech, robotics, AI, medicine, genetics, materials, manufacturing, FMCG like cosmetics or beverages, resources, energy. Allan's successes include pre-revenue tech startups that have stalled, family portfolios, universities, government departments, a Royal Society, and mature companies on international stock exchanges that have plateaued. Allan makes it look easy.
TECHNOLOGY
In 1979 Allan created the world's first commercially successful smart mobile robot, the Tasman Turtle, an advanced educational product to encourage learning and problem solving in school children. Then between 1979 and 1997 he created the first autonomous navigation system, the first robot vacuum cleaners, the first service robots, during that time more mobile robots than anyone. Educational, hobby, toy robots, industrial, stair climbing, television, research, luggage robots, walking robots, sensor technologies, navigation technologies, and more. For his own company and for the likes of General Electric, Radio Shack, Moulinex, Tomy, NASA. In 1979 his Tasman Turtle educational Logo robot could speak, be controlled by voice in any language, display rudimentary navigation and mapping and path planning. even learning through Pavlovian conditioning. But his technology interests started with neural nets and vision systems, novel car engines running on water, heart lung machines and transplant surgery, management systems, business machines and more. The Australian Federal Minister for Science and Technology once described Allan as one of Australia's key technologists. He was Invited Visiting Scientist to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1989/90 and has guest lectured on robotics, technology commercialisation, AI, entrepreneurialism and business management at universities like UTas, CMU, Texas A&M, Singapore, Sydney University and Harvard.
THE IDEA IS EASY, IT IS SELLING IT THAT IS THE HARD PART
Nobody understands commercializing technology products and services like Allan.
A BOOK TO MAKE YOU SIT UP AND PAY ATTENTION
Told through vivid vignettes, The Vandemonian captures Allan’s extraordinary journey of invention and transformation—revealing the man behind the robots. Blending the introspective depth of Paul Auster’s Winter Journal with the transformative arc of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, The Vandemonian is a compelling narrative of human ingenuity and perseverance.
How do you escape a loving but dysfunctional and at times violent family hidden at the tip of the world? What do you do and how do you do it? Allan Branch found the perfect way. With the help of teachers and mentors who saw something special in him, Allan moved from the backwoods of a tiny alpine village to dominate one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting industries. Then he had to escape a second time. What made him change direction again at the top of his game? This time alone, ultimately to the high end of the corporate and financial corridors, over 20 countries, circling the globe a hundred times. Both times the inconsistencies of the technology world led to achievements unimaginable to those around him. For decades he faced disaster, attacks, tragedy, loss, between periods of euphoric highs and seemingly insurmountable challenges. This is the captivating adventure of a surprisingly complex, yet unpresupposing man, who fought the system to escape it, losing lives and saving lives along the way. Discovering disturbing personal truths.
If you aspire to something but are not sure what it is, then this is a must read. Business leaders, politicians, entrepreneurs, anyone excited by success without aggression, compassionate leadership. An uplifting example of a life and style often absent in today’s board rooms and government departments.
Coming!
THE WORLD OF THE TURNAROUND CEO
Unlike anything you have encountered or read. All the secrets that have saved scores of companies and hundreds of jobs.
ALLAN CHARLES BRANCH
YOU CAN NEVER WIN
Are there "Hitlers" amongst us?
Why there are always thugs in the world. The genetics of fascism.
ALLAN CHARLES BRANCH
BLIND FAITH
He has found the coveted "God" gene and people are killing to get it. A novel of industrial espionage.
ALLAN CHARLES BRANCH
PRAISE FOR THE VANDEMONIAN
PRAISE FOR THE VANDEMONIAN
"Impressive. A lot of people born on this island end up doing remarkable things far from here. Allan Charles Branch is one such example. The Vandemonian is at once a memoir, travel and business lessons, from a man born in 1950 in the tiny Hydro village of Waddamana and who ended up in Silicon Valley. Readers interested in business memoirs will appreciate Branch's insights on revitalising companies - from mining to robotics - and the lessons he learned along the way. What Branch does well is tell a decent yarn. Some of his descriptions of life in Waddamana and visits to Hobart in the 1960s will be familiar to many. If this book has a theme it is a Tasmanian's journey through the diverse and confronting United States. Branch describes his life as like a "slalom with the odd ski jump and side trips to the piste with the inevitable catastrophes. This book reads that way."
Gregory Barns SC, is a prominent human rights lawyer and author of "Rise of the Right," “What's Wrong with the Liberal Party?”, “Selling the Australian Government: Politics and Propaganda from Whitlam to Howard” and "Groundswell" in the prestigious Quarterly Review. Greg is a company director and widely published political commentator regularly appearing in major newspapers.
Upcoming Engagements
Contact Allan before your company collapses.
For international guest lectures, speaking engagements, keynote addresses.
For autographed copies of THE VANDEMONIAN.