A very onesie Xmas from the Linfox hole

MEET the Foxes. They’re the cutest troop of billionaires you’ll ever clap eyes on. This year’s Christmas card from Linfox patriarch Lindsay features the clan, proudly clad in animal onesies, standing on what looks like the clifftop overlooking the beach at the family’s Portsea summer home.

And the animal uniform in question? The fox, of course.

While former British PM Tony Blair’s latest card is more season’s beatings than season’s greetings, showing him in a bare-toothed grimace, apparently ready to bite off wife Cherie’s head — the Foxes look relaxed and happy.

Margin Call hears the shot was taken at last year’s holiday get-together, a special shindig because it featured family members who’d flown in from overseas for the occasion.

The Australian’s vulpine experts reckon that in addition to Lindsay, other family members in the shot include sons Peter, who’s on the Linfox board, Andrew, who oversees the property arm, and David, who looks after the clan’s Avalon Airport near sunny Geelong.

Tassie’s defo U-turn

IT’S back to the dark ages for Tasmanian Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin and the Apple Isle’s newish Liberal government, who appear determined to reinforce every miserable stereotype about how backward and stupid denizens of the state are by returning the right to sue for defamation to big companies.

Way back in 2005, after much angst, then federal AG Philip Ruddock and his state and territory counterparts thrashed out a deal bringing the country’s hodgepodge of defamation laws into line with each other.

In a boon to business journalism, companies with more than 10 employees were stripped of their right to sue for defo. The right had been used by the likes of Macquarie Bank, which claimed its fee-fees were hurt by a story in this newspaper exposing its role at the Beaconsfield mine in Tasmania. (After much expense, it lost.)

Now, in response to campaigns from green groups against forestry companies, Tassie plans to blow a giant hole in the hard-fought-for national regime.

In the age of the internet, almost everything is published almost everywhere, leaving the choice of where to sue as a matter of convenience for any would-be plaintiff with a national footprint. At the moment there’s little difference between one court and another, but Tassie aims to reverse that.

Defo lawyer Justin Quill, who represents News Corp, said the move was “of real concern”.

“There’s a reason why all the states and territories agreed back in 2005 to introduce uniform defamation laws that didn’t allow big companies to sue and shut down debate and the Tasmanian government seems to be going against those reasons,” he said.

Maxton v Murray

IAN Maxton’s investment banking shop Nomura hasn’t had the easiest time since setting up after the GFC.

So no surprise he’s chuffed David Murray left those slick IB types alone in his bible on the future financial system.

“I just wanted to say on behalf of all the investment bankers in the room, thank you for not making any recommendations that are tricky in respect of global investment banks,” a rather cheeky Maxton told Murray at a lunch in Sydney yesterday.

Murray hit back: “We don’t want to get in the way of that Wall Street juggernaut do we.”

Everyone in the crowd — bar the big four — giggled on.

Whitford buys up big

ESTRANGED Vocation founder Brett Whitford got $1.89 a share for selling his CSIA business into the much-hyped float late last year but, according to a substantial shareholder notice lodged yesterday, has been buying up big licks for rather less — 28c on average — over the past month.

Whitford reaped about $65 million in cash out of the float, on top of $34m in shares.

Sadly, the shares are worth a lot less now. But even so, he’s spent just $4.6m moving his stake from 9.1 per cent to 15 per cent of the embattled educator.

Perhaps he could buy the company back?