City Beat: Awkward timing for new Novonix board member Andrew Liveris

HE’S a Trump supporter who just swapped a life of perks as Dow Chemicals boss for a board position in Brisbane. And Trump’s latest move might be bad for business.

THE timing could hardly be more awkward.

Former Dow Chemical boss and UQ graduate Andrew Liveris started his long-flagged gig on the board of Brisbane’s lithium iron battery maker Novonix at the beginning of the month.

Liveris is also a big backer of President Donald Trump, who just days later announced a 10 per cent tariff on imports of natural and artificial graphite from China, the world’s biggest producer of the stuff.

Amazingly Novonix, formerly known as Graphitecorp, said initial indications are the move might actually be a positive for its US-based operations in Tennessee but it warranted further investigation.

Frankly, we have our doubts. Early last year, Liveris lavished praise on the Trump team as “the most pro-business administration since the Founding Fathers’’ so we’re still trying to square that sentiment with the economic lunacy of the US launching a trade war with much of the world. At least Liveris, who served on Trump’s manufacturing council and oversaw Dow’s $US1 million donation for his inauguration, seems to have had a bit of sway saving his home country from some of the pain. Back in March he joined forces with golf legend Greg Norman in a successful effort to spare Australia from steel and aluminium tariffs.

Illustration: Brett Lethbridge

No accident

It’s probably no accident that Liveris chose Novonix as one of his first corporate outings after wrapping up a long career at Dow, where he pocketed a whopping $US65 million last year following the $US130 billion merger with DuPont.

The Darwin native, who owns an $8 million spread in Sydney, tipped about $200,000 of seed capital into Novonix before it floated in late 2015.

He would have known about the firm since he’s great mates with Tony Bellas, the prominent bizoid who chairs the firm and just happens to be his brother-in-law. The ties that bind go even further, with the Novonix VP of Business Development being none other than Nick Liveris. Yep, that’s Andrew’s boy.

Papa Liveris now has a bit more skin in the game. He’s got just over two million shares and another five million options in the company, which continues to amass red ink as it struggles to get a slice of the $US20 billion global battery pie.

Former Dow Chemicals boss Andrew Liveris

But City Beat spies wonder if he’ll miss the lavish perks at Dow, which raised quite a few eyebrows.

Chief among these was his access to Dow’s private jet, which he used to fly cases of Penfolds Grange to the US, pick up Bill Clinton for a round of gold and attend a Super Bowl game in Miami.

Did we mention the outings to the Bahamas, as well as trips to Hamilton Island and the Gold Coast?

The spending was as camouflaged as it was outrageously self-indulgent.

Indeed, US regulators fined Dow $US1.75 million this month after determining it failed to divulge $US3 million worth of the fringe benefits over a four-year period to 2015.

Presumably Liveris’ job as a non-executive director at Novonix will be limited to a few board meetings and a couple of phone calls to open doors in the US.
As promising as the battery revolution may be, Liveris has hedged his bets on the future of renewable power.

Earlier this month he joined the board of Saudi Aramco, the government-owned oil giant which generated an astonishing $34 billion profit in the first half of the year.