AFL report embarrasses sandgropers

Cartoon Rod Clement

In a fortnight, outgoing Wesfarmers chief Richard Goyder will take over from player-turned-infrastructure-businessman Mike Fitzpatrick as AFL Commission chair.

Richard Goyder.

And in an amazing coincidence, a damning, nine-year-old AFL-commissioned report on culture and governance at the West Coast Eagles by former Victorian Supreme Court judge William Gillard has emerged just before Goyder takes the helm.

It’s almost as if the respected business leader has been cleaning house before his Aussie Rules reign begins.

Wonder if any other skeletons from AFL House will be exhumed before the Perth local starts on April 4?

Gillard’s report is embarrassing for a host of prominent sandgropers.

West Coast’s No 1 ticket holder is Foreign Minister Julie ­Bishop, who yesterday was incommunicado on an international flight.

Julie Bishop.

Bishop joined the Weagles board in November 2008, nine months after Gillard’s report was in.

During her time there — Bishop stood down in 2013 — the disgraced club tamed its wild ways. Although, as flagged in this column, its board still looks a bit hairy thanks to director Maryna Fewste r’s role at the problematic Perth operations of Seven West, previously run by Fewster’s fellow Weagle board member Chris Wharton.

Directors back in 2007 — the period covered in the report — comprise a who’s who of sandgropers. Club boss Trevor Nisbett continues as CEO, a role he’s had for 18 years. He’s seen it all.

Also on the board then was investment banker Mark Barnaba (chairman of Macquarie Group, WA), his former Azure Capital colleague James McMahon, Royal Auto Club of WA boss Terry Agnew, former Woodside exec Christopher Cronin and wealth manager Graeme Yukich.

The club won the 2006 premiership, but at what cost to the players — and the directors’ CVs?

Kelly O’Dwyer and husband Jon Mant with their first born, Olivia. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

Pregnant pause

The due date — never a fixed thing — for Kelly O’Dwyer’s second-born is weeks away.

O’Dwyer is not in Canberra this week. Her doctor won’t give the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services a pass to fly, so she’s doing her ministerial work from Melbourne.

As Defence Minister Marise Payne demonstrated when she was convalescing last year, PM Malcolm Turnbull’s cabinet can be attended by teleconference. The same presumably goes for the Expenditure Review Committee, on which O’Dwyer also sits.

Treasurer Scott Morrison is representing the Member for Higgins in question time. ScoMo will then assume O’Dwyer’s ministerial responsibilities while she’s off on maternity leave.

If her first born is any guide, the Minister won’t be gone long. A day before Olivia was born in 2015, O’Dwyer was giving a keynote at a post-budget breakfast in front of 1200-odd people.

She was off for less than two months. And it looks O’Dwyer won’t be following outgoing Labor MP Kate Ellis, who is leaving Canberra to be with her young family in Adelaide.

O’Dwyer’s husband, UBS investment banker Jon Mant, took a bit over six months paternity leave last time around. We understand the executive director has been given the nod for six months off from the wealthy Aussie outpost of the Swiss giant to help with baby
No 2.

Just as well. It would have a terrible look for local boss UBS Matthew Grounds to complicate the family life of his key portfolio minister.

Less concerned with such niceties are the industry superannuation funds, which have declared war on the eight-months pregnant minister.

Industry Super’s David Whitely and the gang have been stomping around Canberra by day this week, as they terrorise the public with their member-paid television ads at night, all ahead of the introduction of any legislation. Not a great look.

Martin Sheppard. Picture: David Geraghty

Switching sides

Speaking of UBS, doesn’t boss Matthew Grounds’ outfithave a penchant for the prettiest girl at the dance — or at least the one with the most cash stuffed in her handbag?

It was only three years ago that the Swiss Down Under were taking services outfit Spotless back to market for Tim Sims’ private equiteers Pacific Equity Partners.

Fast forward to this week and UBS is advising chairman Michael Harding’s Downer EDI on its takeover of Spotless. It’s all about the Benjamins.

UBS floated Spotless alongside Citi and Deutsche as joint-lead managers at $1.60 a share. Before UBS started this week raiding Spotless — one of many private equity-backed ASX horror floats — it was trading at 72.5c. Even we know that’s less than half.

PEP, which two years earlier had bought and delisted Spotless before re-engineering the business ahead of the fresh float, flogged $995m worth of stock, so that the JLMs made $19.9m in combined fees and likely a $4.975m bonus fee. That’s $24.9m all up.

Divided equally (and it may not have been) that meant $8.3m for UBS.

Now as Downer’s takeover adviser, “The Rockstar” Grounds’ will get another multi-million-dollar clip of the Spotless ticket. And they’re raising $1.1bn for Downer to fund the deal — the biggest equity capital markets deal of the year. The total UBS deal fee looks significant.

Citi and Gilbert + Tobin, meanwhile, have stuck with Spotless from float through to takeover, but it sounds like those defence appointments were close calls.

Word is it’s been a revolving door of advisers in recent times to the catering company under CEO Martin Sheppard.

We gather Macquarie were surprised it didn’t get the call up this week.

Should Downer gobble up Spotless it would make for a circa $4bn company. That would be good for the bragging rights of former Scott Morrison-staffer Sasha Grebe, who starts as Downer’s head of government relations in April. There he’ll join comms heavyweight Michael Sharp (of Qantas, Brambles and Westfield pedigree), who now oversees corporate affairs and investor relations at the acquisitive contractor.

Melbourne move

Looks like Melbourne’s Federal Court has gazumped the NSW Supreme Court, following Julian Burnside’s dramatic intervention on behalf of Amber Harrison in the case against her former lover Tim Worne r’s Seven West Media.

The Federal Court’s Mordecai “Mordy” Bromberg will next Thursday preside over a case management hearing for Harrison’s claim that her workplace rights were breached by Seven. That’s a week before Justice John Sackar rules in the Supreme Court on whether Harrison’s cross-claim against Seven should be transferred to the Federal Court, which Burnside has requested.

Seems the high-stakes legal action could move far from Seven West’s Sydney headquarters and into Harrison and Burnside’s home turf in Melbourne faster than expected.

Justice Bromberg’s past as a St Kilda player has attracted some attention. Perhaps more interesting is Bromberg’s past with Burnside. The two were members — along with Herman Borenstein — of the legal “B team” that represented the Maritime Union of Australia in their historic case against Chris Corrigan’s Patrick Stevedores.

Their shared role in the waterfront dispute was even cited by the president of the Australian Bar Association Peter Riordan when Bromberg was sworn in as a Federal Court justice in 2009. “Burnside freely volunteers that he learned everything he knew about the Workplace Relations Act from your Honour and the rest of the ‘B team’,” said Riordan.

Burnside is now attempting to put that same employment law expertise to work on behalf of Harrison in Bromberg’s court. It’s a small world at the Australian Bar.