Rest assured. If ever nefarious actors try to take a peek under the hood of Melbourne religious institution the Australian Football League, boss Gillon McLachlan and chairman Richard Goyder have the risk covered.
Financial accounts just in from the Aussie rules managing body, which suffered a Covid-driven underlying loss of $43m in the past year to October 31, following a loss of $22.7m the year before, reveal the league has engaged the services of BGH Capital-backed cybersecurity outfit CyberCX towards rendering footy’s controlling body attack-proof.
CyberCX is Australia’s largest pure cybersecurity company. It is headed by former national cybersecurity adviser Alastair MacGibbon and former Optus Business managing director John Paitaridis, with Ben Gray and Robin Bishop’s BGH buying the company in 2019.
Bishop, of course, moonlights as an AFL director, with the AFL paying CyberCX $4.5m last year for “cybersecurity services”.
The payment was disclosed by the AFL as a related-party transaction.
Other AFL non-executive directors, all of whom took no fees last year, include Seek co-founder Paul Bassat and former Foxtel boss Kim Williams.
The wider group’s financial report reveals the AFL generated total revenue of $738m, up from $675m, as Covid-19 continued to cause “major financial disruption to all levels of football”.
A cost reduction program that McLachlan started in 2020 continued in 2021 to “ensure financial stability”. The AFL also said it had secured $660m in additional borrowing facilities with NAB and ANZ to support industry liquidity, with these facilities since extinguished.
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Packer’s new casa
It’s taken no less than 3½ years, but billionaire James Packer’s new $50m-plus abode in glamorous Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula is finally complete.
Spies on the ground inform Margin Call that the home’s foreboding hurricane shutters are up and that the luxury residence is now ready for occupancy by the reclusive Australian billionaire, his family and friends.
Packer, who has 36 per cent of Crown Resorts and is set to cash in to the tune of $3.3bn from an almost $9bn recommended takeover offer for the gaming giant by international private equity giant Blackstone, bought the oceanfront land in Mexico in 2018.
Early impressions of the no-expense-spared coastal pile were negative, with Packer’s home – with the hurricane shutters down – criticised by locals as looking like a prison.
Completion of the long-delayed project on the coastal playground frequented by celebrities including Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Cameron Diaz, Jessica Alba, Oprah Winfrey and Justin Timberlake, follows Packer’s settlement on his new apartment in Crown Sydney at Barangaroo at the start of this year.
The offshore-based billionaire, 54, is yet to set foot in his $72m luxury high-rise apartment, atop Crown’s Harbour City entertainment complex including its still-closed gaming room.
The Bergin report into Crown recommended Crown eliminate covert influence from major shareholder Packer, which could make any visits to his new One Barangaroo home tricky and the apartment potentially retained for use by Packer’s three children and his mother, Ros Packer.
The billionaire also has a mansion in Los Angeles, a home at Aspen and his polo ranch Ellerstina on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.
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Advisory chair exits
Normandy Mining founder Robert Champion de Crespigny is stepping down as chair of international political advisory shop CT Group.
Following on from the now 72-year-old successful businessman’s 20-year stint running what was originally the Crosby Textor board, group co-founder and former Howard government adviser Lynton Crosby is set to take over as executive chair of the group.
“We have been incredibly lucky to have such an accomplished business figure and friend as a source of advice and counsel over the last 20 years,” Sir Lynton told Margin Call of Champion de Crespigny.
The firm’s other co-founder, pollster Mark Textor, will continue as a director with two other directors also to be appointed. Founded in Canberra in 2002, CT now has more than 140 professional employees globally, and has run more than 300 political campaigns in 50-plus countries. It has worked for Boris Johnson and David Cameron in the UK.
Scott Morrison’s principal private secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, is a former CT executive.
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