New twist for beleaguered Brisbane bistro Mariosarti

A FIXTURE on its suburban high street for more than two decades, this popular bistro has been at the centre of some turbulence over the past few years. Now a new eatery will be launched on the site.

Cleanaway chief Vik Bansal.

THE boss of Australia’s largest waste management group has enjoyed a whopping 23 per cent lift in his pay packet.

Yes, Cleanaway chief Vik Bansal reaped a $4.34 million windfall in the last financial year, up from $3.52 million in 2016-17.

But don’t expect shareholders in the group to start howling any time soon at the largesse, which was revealed in the annual report released yesterday.

That’s because Bansal has managed to turn around the once-flagging fortunes of the company he arrived at in Brisbane only three years ago.

Back then, it was still called Transpacific Industries and was struggling to emerge from a near-death experience in the GFC.

That drama was precipitated by the debt-fuelled $2 billion acquisitions binge of now-departed founder and chairman Terry Peabody.

When Bansal took the helm, the company was floundering in a kind of corporate hangover with its share price in the doldrums.

It had churned through four CEOs in five years, racked up huge losses and battled to control costs.

Illustration of Vik Bansal by Brett Lethbridge.

Since then Bansal has restructured the group, rebranded it and cut costs.

Fast forward to today and he has just presided over a 42.5 per cent jump in statutory net profit to $103.3 million in the year to June 30.

That came on the back of a 17.9 per cent spike in revenue to $1.71 billion.

Bansal raised $590 million from investors during the course of the year and oversaw the takeover of rival Toxfree in a $671 million deal.

In an rather ironic footnote to the sale, it emerged that Bansal had actually worked at one of Toxfree’s incinerators back in 1992.

Now he owns it!

Cleanaway shares, which languished at 59¢ when Bansal arrived, closed yesterday at $2.

GETTING A HAIRCUT

SPEAKING of pay packets, Data#3 head Laurence Baynham suffered a bit of a haircut as the Brisbane-based outfit delivered a pretty disappointing annual result yesterday.

Baynham took home $880,100 last year, down from $914,707, largely as a result of a drop in his cash bonus and long-term incentives.

Other top executives at the IT provider saw similar rollbacks as Data#3 reported an 8.4 per cent drop in net profit to $14.1 million. Revenue slipped 7.6 per cent to $1.2 billion. Baynham blamed “a particularly challenging first half due to a number of one-off events’’ for the slide and provided no specific guidance for the year ahead.

BISTRO LAZARUS

WE hear that Daniel Milos is planning to launch a new eatery at the site of his now-closed Mariosarti restaurant in Toowong.

That’s despite Milos facing charges of drug-trafficking and money-laundering which forced him to shut the award-winning eatery early last year.

A fixture on the high street for 23 years, it reopened under new management a few weeks later in May 2017 but went bust again after only 14 months.

Leasing agents told us this week that Milos had originally planned to find new operators for the site but then changed his mind and decided to get back in the game himself.

It’s understood that former suppliers have been approached, with some declining to get on-board.

Milos, who remains free on bail, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Property records show that Milos Property Holdings acquired the site for $592,500 in late 2016.

Former Mariosarti head chef Ryan David McIver pleaded guilty in June to supplying cocaine to customers in 2016 and 2017 at the behest of his boss.

He was sentenced to two years in jail, suspended after three months. Milos’ case is still before the court.