“Sir” Bob plans busy year at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

BRISBANE Convention and Exhibition Centre boss Bob O’Keeffe has been walking a bit straighter these days after his inclusion in the Australia Day honours list.

Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre general manager Bob O'Keeffe. Picture: Mark Cranitch

LORD OF THE MANOR

SO arise Sir Robert of Grey St! Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre boss Bob O’Keeffe has been walking a bit straighter these days after being ennobled in the recent Australia Day honours list with an AM.

Sir Bob is not forcing people to bow and scrape in his presence but we hear that eyes are respectfully averted as the great man walks around the centre’s hallowed halls.

On a more serious note, Bob tells us 2019 is shaping up to be a record year for the centre in terms of bookings, bigger even than when Brisbane hosted the G20 in 2014.

“There has been $4 billion invested in new (convention and meeting) infrastructure that compete with us and people are always saying that we will lose business but we keep performing strongly,” says Bob.

Bob kicked off the year with style this week, hosting a lunch for media types, including your diarist, to celebrate the promotion of David Pugh as the centre’s executive chef. Pugh previously served as development chef at the centre.

Guests including ABC presenter Steve Austin, Channel 7’s Tiffany McKinnon and the Courier-Mail’s very own Kylie Lang chowed down on a Pugh-selected menu that included spanner crabs, Kilcoy beef and mint sponge and finger lime cream.

 

PAINFUL READING

NO reflection on Pugh’s excellent nosh, but your diarist was off to the dentist soon after the lunch where he happened to pick up a magazine titled Bite in a stack of other reading material lying on the counter.

This was not the typical celebrity muck you usually find in a dental clinic featuring stuff on royalty and reality television, but the dentist’s professional trade magazine that had probably mistakenly been placed in the waiting room. Along with some stories on the state of the tooth-pulling game there was a series of “product review” articles.

One was about dental implants with a series of awful photos of what looked like bolts being screwed into bloody gums. This was described as an “implant restoration of the edentulous atrophied maxilla.” Ouch! I will stick to reading the New Idea next time.

 

SHORTEST DAY

A BIG day for Jamie “Working Class Man” Pherous’ Corporate Travel Management next Wednesday when the company announces it half yearly results. We hear the boys from VGI Partners, who launched a shorting attack on the company last year, will be running the ruler very closely over the figures put out by CTM. “Its numbers do not make sense,” VGI said earlier this month.

By coincidence, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises, which also has drawn the attention of short sellers in the past, will announced its own half yearly results on the same day.

 

PAY DAY

TROUBLED mining minnow Metallica has sorted out the employment arrangements for new interim chief executive Scott Waddell.

Waddell, who was part of a coup that saw the ouster of directors Simon Slesarewich, Michael Hansel and Alan Evans last month, will be paid $1200 a day (excluding GST) on a contractor basis. No short or long term incentives will be included.

You might recall Slesarewich’s employment as managing director was suspended last week pending a review into the “administration, management and corporate costs” and reasons for the delay to the company Urquhart bauxite project near Weipa.