If every cloud has a silver lining then big pharma has plenty to look forward to amid the fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic.
Take the local offshoot of international drug giant Pfizer, whose management looks to have spent at least the back end of their most recent operating year to November 30, preparing the groundwork for what is likely to be a bumper 2021.
Financial accounts seen by Margin Call reveal that Pfizer Australia Holdings has taken the opportunity to initiate significant multimillion-dollar write-offs in its local operations just ahead of balance date and just ahead of signing its COVID vaccine supply agreement with the federal government.
Pfizer has taken a “restructuring provision” associated with the closure of its Perth facility — announced mid-October — of $43.3m, as well as an impairment charge on property plant and equipment of $20.2m.
These have dragged the group to a $32.9m loss in 2020, compared with a $6m profit the year before.
But Pfizer’s deal with Health Minister Greg Hunt for the supply of just over 40 million doses of its Comirnaty drug is likely to see the group rocketing back into the black this year when revenues are set to flow and profits jump thanks to last year’s deck-clearing exercise.
The year’s loss was generated off total revenues in 2020 of $436.8m, just slightly down from the previous year.
Pfizer’s first vaccination supply agreement with the Morrison government was signed on November 5, 2020, just a few days after balance date and a few weeks after the Perth closure was revealed.
Shutting that facility is expected to result in the loss of about 500 jobs in the west.
The financial loss had other positive consequences in the year along with clearing the decks.
The accounts, which have just been lodged with the financial regulator, reveal that the loss meant the local arm of the international drug giant paid no corporate tax on its earnings, instead recording a $13.3m tax benefit for the year.
New chapter
There’s plenty of content accumulating for an addendum to former Westpac boss Brian Hartzer’s new book on leadership.e
On Wednesday, the corporate regulator turned the page on a fresh civil suit against the big four bank, now led by Hartzer’s former CFO and Westpac veteran Peter King, alleging the $95bn institution engaged in insider trading and unconscionable conduct during the controversial, $16.2bn Ausgrid privatisation in 2016.
Hartzer was Westpac boss from 2015 until he exited in 2019.
He was also chief amid a money-laundering scandal involving allegations the bank failed to stop transactions with the Philippines involving child exploitation, which ultimately cost the CEO his job.
Austrac alleged the bank committed 23 million breaches of Australia’s anti-money laundering laws, with Westpac last year agreeing to ultimately pay $1.3bn in fines to settle the affair.
The perfect professional experience really to qualify one to write a business book about how to get people to do the best job possible.
But life goes on for the former bank chief, who is chair of the Australian Museum and earlier this year started as a senior adviser at the Woolworths-backed data science and analytics firm Quantium.
Hartzer has fresh pursuits brewing on the private front too, recently establishing two new corporate vehicles, 2BE Group and 2BE Finance, of which Hartzer is sole shareholder and director.
The businessman already has an extensive portfolio of private corporate vehicles through which he manages his financial affairs.
The battle for Hawke
Nothing like the prospect of a brand new safe seat in the federal parliament to fire up internal party tensions.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party as high-profile members manoeuvre for pole position in an accelerated battle for preselection in the new Victorian Division of Hawke.
On Wednesday night, Labor women were set to meet to discuss the Hawke preselection, in a gathering organised by Victorian state government minister Natalie Hutchins, who has indicated her intention to throw her hat in the ring for the seat.
Hutchins is Premier Dan Andrews’ Corrections, Crime Prevention, Youth Justice and Victim Support Minister, representing the good people of Sydenham.
Hutchins’ seat has some crossover with Hawke, which was named after former prime minister Bob Hawke and takes in suburbs covering Melbourne’s outer fringe including Sunbury, Melton, Bacchus Marsh and Ballan.
But frontrunner for the plum slot — the ALP is expected to take the seat by a margin in excess of 10 per cent — is former ALP Victorian state secretary and campaign director turned PwC partner Sam Rae.
Party loyalist Rae left his key gig after then opposition leader Bill Shorten’s shock election loss in May 2019 to Scott Morrison, but now wants back into politics as Labor’s first Member for Hawke.
Powerbroker and former communications minister Stephen Conroy, who Rae worked for as an adviser for six years, is backing the 34-year-old for the seat, but so far no-one has mentioned the fact that Rae doesn’t really live within cooee of the new electorate having been a resident of inner city Brunswick East where he purchased a home in 2016.
That places Rae in party colleague Peter Khalis’s seat of Wills.
Yesterday, former Victorian Labor minister Kay Setches declared she’d nominate for the new safe federal seat as well, declaring she “cannot stand by and watch another safe seat go to the boys”.
Layered on top of all that are rival unions blueing over a power-sharing deal that is said to carve up seats to ensure internal stability, but which may be challenged in court by other unions angry they have been left out of the deal.
Which side wins a court battle could impact the Hawke and other electorate preselections as next year’s actual election edges ever closer.
ERA mining PM’s speeches for Jabiluka trouble
Cancelling the mining licence for ERA’s Jabiluka uranium mine should have been an easy win for Anthony Albanese’s government. But it might be shaping up as an own goal.
Lobbyist firm’s client juggling act of opposing interests
Labor-aligned lobbyist Anacta Strategies represents both a British class-action firm and one of the world’s biggest coal producers so get out the popcorn if those two clients butt heads.