Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt is where the uppermost elite, the influential, the “cream” of Victorian high society – the thick and rich* – gathered for the 70th anniversary of law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler on Monday night, held as a knees-up for a whopping 900 guests inside the hotel’s cavernous Savoy Ballroom.
Plenty of deep-pocketed backers in attendance, explainable by ABL’s talent for attracting absurdly wealthy clients. Hence the concentration of billionaires like Alex Waislitz, John Gandel, Spotlight’s Morry Fraid and Visy executive chairman Anthony Pratt.
And let’s not forget retail baron Marc Besen, who’s soon to hit a tonne for his 100th birthday.
Solomon Lew was in fine fettle, walking in like a Don after shares in Premier Investments and Breville spiked by 12.8 per cent and 9.9 per cent, respectively, during the afternoon.
That alone raised Premier’s value by nearly half a billion dollars, something resembling the cumulative total of Lew’s other little plaything, Myer.
No surprise, that ABL will advise him on the demerger of Premier’s $3.8bn empire, as flagged to the ASX, with UBS to help.
Politicians will always turn up when there’s money in the room. Anthony Albanese, the guest of honour, kept with a prime ministerial tradition started by John Howard and later Tony Abbott, each of whom appeared at ABL’s Golden and Diamond anniversaries.
But no sign of Liberal leader Peter Dutton for this decade’s platinum edition; he dispatched Simon Birmingham, James Patterson and Yes-man Julian Leeser in his stead, and one suspects ABL partner Mark Leibler’s speech – a third of which was devoted to upping an Indigenous voice to parliament – may have motivated that decision.
Or perhaps he just didn’t want to play nice with Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson.
Both were in the audience, with Pearson having repeatedly branded Dutton “weak”, “duplicitous” and “dishonest” in recent months.
It was also just an unabashed Labor love-in, so that might explain it. Hence Albo’s joke that he could have held a cabinet meeting, starting with Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan, Treasurer Tim Pallas, former premier Steve Bracks, and continuing with their federal allies in Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and NDIS Minister Bill Shorten. Would it even be an ABL shindig without former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, a past beneficiary of ABL services?
He was seen in striking distance from former high court judge Kenneth Hayne, their relationship still uncertain.
It was Hayne who in 2019 refused to shake Frydenberg’s hand during a photo call to release that royal commission report into the banking system.
Margin Call also wondered if there might be a touch of frost between Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon and Albanese, and everyone just knows that’s over Labor’s decision last year to reverse course on West Jerusalem as the Jewish state’s capital, and that other U-turn of recent days to tweak the terminology around West Bank settlements. But no, they had a good little chat, and it wasn’t as cold as a knife in the freezer.
Former Victorian governor Linda Dessau turned up for a cocktail (managing to do so without the need of a police escort) while ASIC chair Joe Longo seemed to do fine without losing his sh.t at anyone.
Obviously when Longo gives an apology, he truly means it.
Early arrivals included Robert Richter KC, Domestique chairman Ross Thornton and ABL partner Jeremy Leibler, seen chatting with Estia chair and Ariadne executive director Gary Weiss.
Former PwC boss Luke Sayers kept good company while still tentatively coming out of hiding over the firm’s ongoing beating over the tax scandal.
Speaking of PwC, TG Public Affairs chairman Stephen Conroy – the former Labor communications minister recruited as a fixer for the firm – was seen in the crowd looking a tad lighter in the shoulders, which makes sense given he’s about to dump PwC as a client at the end of the month. Who wants that headache?
Ahmed Fahour turned up, of course. He’s very good at that, and great to see David Thurin – Gandel’s son-in-law – make it as well, despite his difficulties with that never-ending lawsuit over the botched refurbishment of his Toorak mansion (a plumbing leak in the billiards room!).
Never far from Waislitz is Antony Catalano, and spotted, too, was Pratt’s sister, Fiona Geminder, plus her husband, Pact chair Raphael Geminder, along with Barrenjoey executive chair Matthew Grounds, Linfox chair Peter Fox and David Smorgan.
Brothers Paul and Andrew Bassat worked the room, as did incoming Transurban CEO Michelle Jablko, while Ruslan Kogan, quirky fella that he is, has never had trouble with that.
*Margin Call’s apologies to W.H. Auden
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