[interestednovice]

No, it was replaced because someone decided that the Reith font needed to be used in the logo.

Exactly. The smart thing to do would have been to use a special variant of Reith for the logo, thereby allowing them to get out of paying the Gill font licensing costs but avoiding the legibility issues.

They already have several variants of the Reith font, to have added a logo-specific tweaked weight and even tweaked letterforms would not have been a huge change. I don’t know why they didn’t bother if they were, as you say, adamant to have a “Reith logo”.

The current situation just doesn’t work, the Reith logo simply looks off and doesn’t work well at various sizes or against different backgrounds. It’s a legibility and usability step backwards.