A bittersweet pill: Why Marcus Blackmore sold his vitamin company

His frustration with the board and its senior management led to his publicly known desire to sell his stake, which in turn attracted the interest of investment bankers who smelled a deal.

It took months of negotiations but ultimately came down to a duel between large Japanese alcohol companies, and while the door remains open for a higher offer, it is considered unlikely.

For Blackmore, Kirin’s offer stacked up for price and ticked the box for a cultural fit. “I feel really good about it,” Blackmore said on Thursday from his northern beaches home in Sydney.

For Kirin, which is better known for its large beer business, Blackmores satisfied any thirst for a strongly branded business and played into its quest for bolt-on acquisitions in its relatively nascent health science business division.

So toxic was his relationship with the then-chair, Anne Templeton-Jones, that all discourse between the major shareholder and the chair had to be funnelled through an intermediary.

And it was prepared to pay top dollar, allowing the Blackmores board to notch up a win.

That said, the price is a long way from Blackmores’ heady days in 2016 when its share price hit $200 as the prospects for a booming China market catapulted the company to market darling status, and then-chief executive Christine Holgate rose to fame.

But it was a bittersweet decision for Blackmore, who has an emotional investment in the company. He admitted that his health suffered badly as he watched those running Blackmores “sacked so many naturopaths – good people. It’s almost as if I had led them to the gallows.”

Relations with the board thawed somewhat under the recently installed chair, Wendy Stops, who Blackmore said he had met some years previously at a health retreat.

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He said she rescinded the blanket staff ban on speaking to Blackmore that the previous chair had put in place.

But at age 78, Blackmore wants to spend more time indulging his fanatical love of sailing and his passion for involvement in the education of a generation of business school students, about everything from entrepreneurialism to the benefits of learning from business mistakes.

One of those lessons will be a warning about boards that focus on governance but have no relevant industry experience.

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