All at sea with cruise control as Ann Sherry pops back up

Cartoon: Rod Clement

The Ruby Princess? Nothing to see here folks.

Former Carnival Australia executive chairman Ann Sherry popped her head up on Wednesday morning for the first time since the still unfolding COVID-19 cruise ship crisis hit the headlines.

Not that Margin Call’s virtual operative could elicit anything from the National Australia Bank director on the controversial matter, which is now the subject of a special commission of inquiry being led by Bret Walker SC.

Sherry ever so quietly slipped away from the Carnival Australia board in March last year, but has endured as a consultant to the US cruise ship giant ever since.

But Sherry’s been nowhere to be seen since the coronavirus pandemic struck the global economy, decimated the cruising industry and placed Carnival under the blowtorch as the virus first ripped through its Diamond Princess cruise ship, soon to be followed by the same aboard the Ruby Princess.

Sherry was a guest speaker at a Trans-Tasman Business Circle webinar event held to discuss the potential economic opportunities associated with the so-called trans-Tasman bubble being proposed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his counterpart across the ditch Jacinda Ardern.

Sherry, who’s also a director of Sydney Airport and chairman of listed marketing group Enero, was billed as co-chair of the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum, with no mention of her gig with the troubled Carnival.

When it came time for questions from the ether, there was zero appetite for anything even remotely associated with Carnival, the Ruby Princess or the future of the cruise industry more generally.

It was as if none of it ever happened.

Despite that, our correspondent was the first to register on the forum to ask Sherry and her fellow panellists a question, but according to the event’s “moderator” the subject of Carnival and cruising was off limits.

“Thanks for your questions — we will not be covering this area in today’s briefing. However, we have passed along your comments,” the moderator said.

We’re still waiting to hear back.

Rolling in it

As the private equiteers circle distressed assets like Virgin Australia amid the unfolding economic crisis, it’s worth bearing in mind how much some of these masters of the universe actually make in a year.

Numbers just in from the local operations of the original barbarians at the gate, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which is run in Australia by Scott Bookmyer,reveal the rarefied world in which private equity deal-makers roam. In the year to the end of last December, corporate records seen by Margin Call reveal that Bookmyer’s KKR Australia made a bottom line loss in 2019 of $12.3m — almost three times its net loss of $3.7m in the 2018 year.

But KKR’s 24 local staff are still rolling around in money thanks to a massive increase in employee benefit expense in the year to $34.4m, up from $22.9m the previous year.

Accounts show that $13.8m of that was handed out as share-based payments, about $400,000 paid into defined contribution plans and about $20.3m dished out as “other” employee benefits — read, real money.

It’s that sort of dosh that sees Bookmyer enjoying the delights of living on Sydney Harbour at Kurraba Point on the lower north shore and KKR’s local private equity partner David Lang, who joined in 2018, rolling about in his Hastings Parade, North Bondi home, which he bought with his former financial analyst wife Dearbhail Lang about 18 months ago for $14m.

Bookmyer and Lang, who are directors of the local operation, didn’t even have to attend a single board meeting in the year.

But all that’s in the past, with the pair now executing on KKR’s $1.7bn purchase of a 55 per cent stake in the Commonwealth Bank’s wealth arm Colonial First State at the same time as seeking to reopen the doors of KKR’s Australian Venue Co hospitality empire and getting the pub group off its books via an IPO.

Shaping up as another well-paid year.

Zoom glitch

FAR Limited, the Africa-focused oil and gas exploration firm, experienced a Zoom video conferencing glitch when endeavouring to conduct its annual general meeting on Wednesday.

Amid heightened shareholder interest in the declining oil price, all was set for their anxious shareholders to tune in to the virtual AGM.

However, many were blocked from getting through to the 10am meeting.

After email and text complaints lobbed, FAR chairman Nicholas Limb hastily emailed out a note to shareholders saying they were “experiencing technical difficulties whereby a number of attendees have not been able to join the AGM online”.

The smart-thinking chairman kept the meeting open and repeated the proceedings from 12pm.

“If you successfully joined at 10am, please leave the meeting by 12pm,” implored the chairman, but by then Zoom had fixed the access issue.

Limb, who is a geophysicist with experience as a stockbroker and merchant banker, told the resumed meeting that despite having set up Zoom for up to 500 people in anticipation of the 200-plus attendees, they’d been limited to 100.

There are some 11,000-plus shareholders, including US deal-maker Meridian Capital’s founder Askar Alshinbayev.

The share price was down yesterday from 1.6c to 1.5c, adding to the near 70 per cent decline over the past 12 months.

The company, listed on the ASX in 2010, saw a peak in 2011 at 14c a share. 

At least in the Zoom age the company didn’t need to pay for the traditional tea and biscuits that the 50 or so shareholders would get when turning up in person.

Harwin sells up

The recently resigned NSW minister Don Harwin — who apparently plans to see out his parliamentary days based at his Pearl Beach retreat — put his redundant Elizabeth Bay apartment to auction on Wednesday night.

It was for registered bidders only at the auction room.

Listed with the prospect of pocketing $1.2m, it was sold to its only bidder at $1,235,000 by LJ Hooker agent David Malouf.

It’s the recuperative sea air that Harwin now seeks following his departure from the mess that is Gladys Berejiklian’s NSW cabinet. Harwin previously noted he had medical ailments and he would recover best on the coast where he had, until the pandemic hit, been running an Airbnb.

Unlike the roaming Deputy Premier John Barilaro, Harwin was one of the few NSW residents fined for not complying with the stay-at-home, stay-away-from-the-regions edicts at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Harwin’s folly triggered the halving of his salary from about $345,000 to that of a backbencher’s $170,000.

Being in the NSW upper house means he will still be in the electorate when he resides at the three-bedroom property, set 300m from the beach and which cost $1.3m mid-last year. 

The former NSW Arts Minister ought be quite at home at Pearl Beach as it’s a rather creative community on the NSW Central Coast.

It was playwright David Williamson who enjoyed and then captured the hamlet’s essence during his extended ownership.

Indeed, Pearl Beach helped inspire his 17th play, Money And Friends.

The now Noosa-based Williamson and wife Kirstin first bought there in 1979 for $55,000.

Over the decades owners have included television interviewer Andrew Denton, arts philanthropist Sophie Landa, actor Robyn Nevin and historian Keith Windschuttle.