Rear Window

The long and short of Nearmap

Joe Aston and Myriam Robin

Feb 16, 2021 – 12.00am

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The customary teeth-gnashing from public company proprietors erupted on Monday following the release last week of a short thesis on Nearmap by activist research house J Capital. It was a predictable line-up – Harvey Norman’s Gerry Harvey, WiseTech’s Richard White and Corporate Travel’s Jamie Pherous – uttering the same disingenuity. “I don’t have an issue with short selling per se“, they variously say, which translates roughly to “I don’t have an issue with short selling that’s not directed at me”.

The Australian‘s David Swan even sustained the irrational narrative that a report by Glaucus – laden with “a rhetoric of crime, including the words ‘suspicion, unjust, gouge, abusive, egregious and distort’” – caused the failure of listed Brisbane asset manager Blue Sky Alternative Investments. That’s right, Blue Sky collapsed because someone said mean things about it. Where, oh where, have we heard such a stupid assertion before?

Joe Aston is the founder of Rampart and the best-selling author of The Chairman’s Lounge: The inside story of how Qantas sold us out. From 2012 to 2023, Joe helmed The Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window column.

Myriam Robin is a senior writer based in the Melbourne newsroom. She has previously been a Rear Window columnist and editor, and before that reported on financial markets and media.