Afterpay’s millionaires on the move
Billionaire Afterpay co-founders and now co-chiefs Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar have hogged the headlines of late but it’s the millionaires that keep coming … and going.
No strangers to a management rejig, the group again set out new reporting lines on Tuesday as it attempts to keep up with its ever-rocketing share price.
The move comes just a year after its previous reshuffle, which saw Eisen step down as executive chair to become chief executive and Molnar reporting to him as the group’s global chief revenue officer.
Describing the new co-chief structure, recently promoted chair Elana Rubin set out the need for both men to have an appropriate level of oversight, as well as “executive prominence and presence both international and domestically”.
Fame, it seems, is fast coming up on the company’s agenda.
But with any management overhaul, some heads will roll.
This time it’s the much-hyped ex-Facebook and PayPal exec Malte Feller who has been booted from the group’s top ranks after less than a year.
The German native had been brought down under for a new role as global chief operating officer in July 2019, another to report to Eisen, after a six-month executive search process, effectively pushing then-COO Barry Odes to a role as chief of staff.
Just 11 months later, though, in the group’s most recent annual report, it was revealed that Feller had ceased as a top executive in June, with his final day at the group slated for November 25 and his responsibilities reallocated to “dedicated executive roles”.
Feller leaves with a tidy $1.8m pay cheque despite his short tenure at the buy now, pay later juggernaut, including a $100,000 bonus payment to relocate from San Francisco to Sydney, as well as more than $71,000 to cover insurance, rent and relocation expenses.
The kicker though, is the outgoing exec’s so-called “buyout payment” of restricted share units issued in the place of forgone rights at his previous employer, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
When he joined last year, those rights were worth $900,000, but on his departure and again thanks to that rocketing share price, the holdings make him the latest to churn out of the Afterpay millionaires factory — worth roughly $3.5m, with two remaining trances set to vest in July 2021 and 2022.
Similarly his predecessor Odes hasn’t been too fazed with his slow edging out of the company.
His healthy accumulation of options has helped him to cash out $26m since April, aiding in the purchase of his $10m Dover Heights abode with wife Nicole.
According to LinkedIn, Odes is now just a part-time executive adviser to the company as of October — the rest of the time, one can only assume, devoted to watching his Afterpay fortunes grow.
The chips are down
Every which way you look at James Packer’s Crown Resorts there’s carnage.
Yesterday, counsel for the Helen Coonan-chaired $6.5bn company was again before former NSW judge Patricia Bergin seeking to save Crown’s licence to run a VIP, members-only gambling den at its yet-to-open, $2.2bn hotel in Sydney’s Barangaroo.
Meantime across town, NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet was lifting the lid on his state’s forecast $104bn government debt thanks to efforts to save the economy from the coronavirus epidemic.
But Crown’s woes are playing their part in Perrottet and his boss Gladys Berejiklian’sbudgetary black hole, as revealed yesterday in the political pair’s 214-page Budget Paper No 1 for the 2020-21 year.
Buried deep in the statement is the news that tax revenue from casinos is forecast to plummet more than 60 per cent this financial year, when compared with moneys returned to government coffers a short two years ago.
Crown is still set to open on December 14 and should start churning out gambling tax revenue to state coffers from the get go.
But thanks to COVID and other uncertainties, tax is predicted to be $158m, which compares to $394m in 2018-19 and $169m in the most recent year.
That’s without even factoring in the hit to high-roller activity from Crown’s just announced plan to scrap all junket operators, unless they are approved by regulators.
The current year forecast tax would come in as the lowest return to the state for the six years out to 2023-24.
And the current year’s revenue will be even less if Crown’s opening is delayed thanks to what will be Bergin’s pending final report from her suitability review.
Board blot
Casual watchers of the casino commission’s Crown inquiry don’t need to watch for long or even very hard to get Patricia Bergin’svibe.
Yesterday, as Queen’s Counsel Neil Young was illuminating his casino’s clients perspective on a Crown newspaper ad responding to media allegations about events leading up to the arrest of its employees in China, former Supreme Court judge Bergin took aim.
At almost the entire Crown board.
“It’s a blot on the board as I see it, a very bad blot,” Bergin declared of the full-page ad, which in part questioned the objectivity of a young female Crown employee who went to jail and appeared as a source in media reports.
“For those directors who could not see it as a blot, it’s difficult to understand their judgment,” Bergin declared.
Only Crown chair Helen Coonan and downtable director Jane Halton escaped the spray.
Coonan had previously admitted the material should not have been published, while former leading public servant Halton, who’s now also on the board at ANZ, told the inquiry that former Crown boss and James Packer appointee John Alexander had bullied her into signing off on the statement.
Ouch.
Sporting chance
Sport it seems is in play when it comes to the board of real estate group’s REA Group.
The subject of dual hats came up at REA’s AGM, including for chairman Hamish McLennan, the newly minted boss of Rugby Australia.
After Nine Entertainment and Stan boss Mike Sneesby secured a rights deal with the football code, McLennan was probed as to how he might be able to juggle his links to the News Corp-backed REA (also the publisher of this newspaper).
Quite easily, he replied, given he “takes his fiduciary responsibilities very seriously”, though the question was “possibly something to consider on a technical basis”, said McLennan, a former television executive.
Similarly, director Richard Freudenstein said he was more than capable of juggling his Cricket Australia board seat given its rights (albeit somewhat contested) are with Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media.
They’ve got their eyes on all the sports it seems.
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