James Packer moves corporate home of Hoyts Cinemas Americas Limited from Barbados to Sydney
What to make of James Packer’s latest corporate manoeuvrings. He has houses all over the globe but on paper resides in the US, and you certainly won’t find him listed on any corporate vehicles in Australia. As for Consolidated Press Holdings, the Packer mothership? It’s domiciled in the Bahamas.
So why is he going out of his way to return one of his most healthy-looking entities to Australia, where the prevailing corporate tax rate – 30 per cent – is higher than those available to him abroad? After all, wasn’t it his late father, Kerry Packer, who said, “If anybody in this country doesn’t minimise their tax they want their heads read”?
Last week, only a short time after James completed a visit to Sydney, his people moved to transplant foreign investment company Hoyts Cinemas Americas Limited from Barbados to Sydney. The entity was also renamed with a bracketed addition: Hoyts Cinemas America (Aus) Pty Ltd.
This isn’t some empty vessel. The company boasted a $148.7m net profit for Packer during the last financial year and holds $200m in assets.
Is it just a bit of financial untangling? Or does it have anything to do with the $1bn sale of the Hoyts cinema business currently being run by Credit Suisse and Nomura?
Packer tells us he’s not a bidder, to be sure. But some may recall Hoyts as having sentimental value to the family. Remember, it was Packer Sr who once owned the flicker-show business in the early 2000s via his Consolidated Press Holdings vehicle. At one point James was even appointed a director.
Perhaps it’s all just a coincidence that the family’s old Hoyts company is staging a local revival – at a time when bids for the cinema chain are coming due, with final offers to be made next month.
Forrest stays mum on voice
Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries was tossed a rather sizeable bone out of Tuesday’s budget. That makes sense – having whanged on at length about the paucity of green hydrogen incentives on offer in Australia, and trotting out executives to make the point on his behalf, the funding announced was plainly a sop to feed the old crocodile.
Thus $2bn was set aside to grease the groove on a nascent domestic hydrogen industry. That was after Mark Hutchinson, FFI’s CEO, coolly dropped a threat last month that domestic investments might dry up if some free money for hydrogen wasn’t made available quick-smart. No doubt his remarks were timed to send a shiver up the backside of the government ahead of the budget.
Forrest enjoyed another small victory that was easier to miss. His lesser-known pet project, modern slavery, received $8m over four years to pay for a commissioner who will keep tabs on the matter. The billionaire evidently bangs the table long enough and eventually the ministers genuflect to give him what he wants.
But what of the Albanese government’s needs and wants? Resources Minister Madeleine King has already made her expectations clear that mining companies like Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group wholeheartedly back plans for an Indigenous voice to parliament.
As King told the Sydney Morning Herald in January: “Given the benefit that the resources sector has gained from this land and the land of the Indigenous people of Australia, the least they could do is get behind having an Indigenous voice to parliament.”
This logic isn’t easy to defend. There are plenty of reasons a mining company might support a voice to parliament, as a number are already doing. But soullessly rallying behind the cause to repay quid-pro-quo mining arrangements, as King specified, is one of the weakest starting points available.
As it turns out, Forrest’s position on the voice might be at odds with King, despite the billions made available for him in the budget. It seems to have barely moved the dial on his thinking, if that was the point of it.
Patricia Karvelas asked Forrest about it on Wednesday and received an impressively elusive response.
“I’ve done everything practical I possibly can to improve the plight of Indigenous people. I grew up with Indigenous people … they are my brothers and sisters so I take practical steps and this is what I’ll advocate for,” he said.
Karvelas was quick back with: “Will you be voting yes?”
Forrest, after a beat: “I think Bill Shorten once said, ‘We don’t know which way Andrew Forrest votes but he always votes for good policy’.”
And so … was this good policy?
Forrest, laughing: “I’m not going to answer.”
Held to account
An opportunistic Ainslie van Onselen – wife of journalist and academic Peter van Onselen – has come out swinging against PwC over the tax leaks affair.
Onselen branded the firm’s conduct “unacceptable” and “unethical” in the Financial Review on Thursday, a strange decision given her Chartered Accountants representative body is running a probe into the firm. Mind already made up, eh – why even bother opening a case file?
It could certainly make matters uncomfortable on the CA ANZ council and board level, where PwC and its partnership alumni are well-represented.
The CA ANZ’s president is Murray Harrington, a member of the PwC partnership for more than 14 years. Meanwhile council member Lisa Hando has been a PwC partner for more than 18 years, exiting only last year.
How awkward.
Tudge’s next move
Mary Doyle, the newly minted member for Aston, is off to a fine start on her first week in parliament. She’s already enjoyed her fix dixer (dropped during QT on Wednesday), which was followed by a stirring maiden speech on Thursday.
It got us wondering about her predecessor, Alan Tudge, who evac’d from parliament in February (thus triggering the by-election that saw Doyle elected).
Looks like the 52-year-old is seeking to reinvent himself as a “corporate adviser”, with his LinkedIn account spruiking his specialties in government, education and migration.
From what we can tell that sounds like wishful thinking, with Tudge neither employed by any firm nor the proud owner of a shingle to hang.
“Self-employed” and “now back working in advisory roles” is how he appears to be describing himself.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.