Stockbroker BBY boss guided by psychic as firm bit the dust

Glenn Rosewall’s colleagues usually talk more of share charts than the astrological variety. The BBY inquiry takes a psychic turn.

Nervine Rottinger leaving Supreme Court in Sydney yesterday. Picture: Adam Yip

It’s more usual to hear stockbrokers talk of share charts than the astrological variety and measuring alpha rather than chakras.

But yesterday an inquiry into the collapse of the stockbroker BBY took a psychic turn as controlling shareholder and executive chairman Glenn Rosewall’s relationship with a woman who describes herself as a “professional intuitive and energy healer’’ was examined in the ­Supreme Court of NSW.

Nervine Rottinger told the court that between 2009 and 2015 she helped guide Mr Rosewall’s decisions and advised on share prices and budgets and the firm’s financial future.

Stressed and tired, Mr Rosewall — son of tennis legend Ken Rosewall, who was a non-executive director of BBY — turned to her for a fresh perspective. They met first at 9am on June 9, 2009, “so there are a lot of nines there’’, she told a liquidator’s examination of the BBY collapse.

“As an empathetic I remember I felt so tired,’’ Ms Rottinger said of her meetings to deal with Mr Rosewall’s chakras for decision-making and stress. “It is a conversation where I am helping them see ahead of time or make a decision in a more enlightened way. A lot of people look at it as magic but I call it mind over matter.’’

She added that she was someone Mr Rosewall could talk to “who was not as embattled as the people who were working at BBY’’.

Glenn Rosewall.

But conversations soon turned to financial matters, with Mr Rosewall asking in 2010 for ­advice on finding buyers for convertible notes in Firestone ­Energy, which BBY had underwritten and the poor performance of which dragged on the broker until its May 2015 collapse.

Creditors including nearly 6000 broking clients have lodged claims for $61 million from what is described as the most complicated collapse since the global ­crisis of 2008.

Liquidator Stephen Vaughan has claimed the firm could have been insolvent as far back as 2011 and he has estimated there is a $23m shortfall of assets to meet the creditors’ claims.

Ms Rottinger told the hearing she drew up astrological charts looking for “patterns when certain planets are aligned so that they generate wealth. You are looking for an activation, an ­empowerment and that is when people are likely to be attracted to that stock’’.

When asked for advice on share prices she would do it ­“intuitively — I just get an image in my mind that tells me what a price may be”. She claimed she had correctly forecast a $3m quarterly revenue result.

Ms Rottinger said astrology was widely used in sharemarket investing and there were “ a lot of volumes’’ published on the ­subject.

Under questioning from David Pritchard SC, for the liquidator, she said between 2009 and 2015 there were periods when she and Mr Rosewall would speak two or three times a day but then they might not converse for six months.

Ms Rottinger billed $300 for their first two-hour meeting but stopped charging in 2011.

“There are times when you don’t want to charge, you feel you are doing something important for the group.’’

Ms Rottinger said she ­predicted in 2014 that things would be “very tight’’ for BBY up until May 2015 and that cashflow would improve through June, but admitted she may also have been told this by Mr Rosewall.

“I certainly had no financial data. This is purely astrological. And it is an interpretation.”

Ms Rottinger said that at a “messy” lunch in December 2014 Mr Rosewall had blamed the firm’s financial position on chief executive Arun Maharaj. “He was upset and he felt that he hadn’t been given the full picture. And I heard something similar from Ken,’’ Ms ­Rottinger said.

Mr Maharaj last week ­described Glenn Rosewall as a “tyrant who ran the firm as a dictatorship”.

Ken and Glenn Rosewall, as well as auditors from the firm BDO, are expected to take the stand as witnesses later this week.