Andrew Hagger of NAB after a bigger hat

Illustration: Rod Clement

NAB’s aspiring CEO Andrew Hagger has parted ways with Greg Hywood’s Fairfax Media, where the banker was moonlighting as a restaurant reviewer.

NAB’s internal PR army yesterday said Hagger’s days and nights awarding hats for the Myffy Rigby-edited Good Food Guide came to an end last year.

Interesting.

The conclusion of Hagger’s extra-curricular foodie gig has been interpreted by some in the banking and fees-for-no-service industry as a sign the ambitious wealth boss is positioning himself as the successor to Andrew ‘$6.6 million’ Thorburn.

It’s well known in the badlands of Melbourne’s Docklands that the Maserati-driving Hagger, 51, fancies himself as next in line to run the Ken Henry-chaired big four bank.

Hagger’s internal rivals are Thorburn’s dinner date-favourite Antony ‘Not Anthony’ Cahill (the bank’s chief operating officer), Henry favourite and former reforming premier of NSW Mike Baird (the bank’s corporate banking boss), and Angela Mentis, who runs the bank’s New Zealand operations, a CEO incubator that nurtured both Thorburn and his predecessor, Cameron Clyne.

While Hagger’s food reviewing nights have come to an end, jazz enthusiasts can rest assured the talented pianist and composer continues to tinkle the ivory. Just ask the still buzzing crowd that was along at Brunswick’s Jazzlab last week to hear Hagger and Robyn Payne’s outfit Cats­play.

The severing of Hagger and Hywood’s media outfit has more conspiratorial minds — Margin Call’s favourite kind — wondering if it is at all related to the interest Shayne Elliott’s agile ANZ has taken in the Fairfax-backed property listings business Domain.

As Margin Call revealed in late January, ANZ — like NAB, marooned in Melbourne’s hot-desking Docklands — has recently explored taking a quarter stake in Domain for more than $500 million.

The logic of that transaction remains, although the bizarre departure of Antony Catalano and Nick Falloon’s Potemkin review into Domain’s reportedly drugs-and-prostitute-loving culture has put discussions on hold.

What’s happened to that Justine Turnbull-authored thing?

$60K? That’s peanuts

Now to Andrew Hagger’s highly anticipated appearance at Kenneth Hayne’s royal commission.

What did we learn?

Well, after all our focus on Hagger’s music skills, it turns out the $3.5m man running NAB’s wealth division can act, too. What a talent!

Throw in Hagger’s aforementioned food-writing skills and the fabulously pinstriped Andrew Thorburn has himself a triple threat.

The acting revelation was unearthed in the second hour of counsel assisting Rowena ‘Shock and’ Orr’s tete-a-tete with Hagger.

Orr wanted to know if Hagger, by day the head of NAB’s scandalous wealth division, had his pay docked by Ken Henry’s board as a result of the team’s widespread habit of falsely witnessing forms signed by its ill-advised clients.

“Yes,” answered Hagger.

“What was the deduction?” asked Orr.

“I’d have to do the maths … I probably need a calculator …” answered Hagger, revealing his hitherto unknown talent as a pinstriped thespian.

After a pause worthy of, if not an Oscar at least a nomination at the next awards night for NAB’s Drama and Light Opera Club, Hagger offered an answer.

“I think it might be $60,000,” said Hagger.

That’s a sum just below the median full-time income in Australia.

But to be fair to the handsomely pocket-squared Hagger, that tickle on the wrist by chairman Henry, Phil Chronican, Geraldine McBride and their fellow forgiving NAB boardmates hardly up-ended the wealth boss’s remuneration.

The $60,000 pay cut was 1.7 per cent of the $3.5m that Henry’s board last year awarded Hagger.

Fair enough, too: the wealth boss’s blue Maserati GranTurismo didn’t buy itself.

All up, chairman Henry and his munificent NAB boardmates remunerated Thorburn, Hagger and the rest of the bank’s executive team $34.5m to run the government-supported banking utility and its misbehaving wealth arm.

The global financial crisis may be 10 years in the past,
but clearly you don’t need to be a hairy-nosed wombat to receive a bit of generosity
from the former Treasury secretary.

And what was Henry paid by NAB’s kindly shareholders for the part-time gig? A relatively modest $790,000. Still, every bit helps.

Andrew Hagger leaves the royal commission hearings. Pic: AAP

Docklands berths

Here are two things you can take to your paperwork-doctoring bank.

Next Thursday, on May 3, NAB boss Andrew Thorburn will announce another stonking multi-billion-dollar profit.

And, any day now, Thorburn will appoint a new head of corporate affairs.

As Margin Call has previously reported, after only one year in the role, Collingwood fan and the current boss of NAB’s corporate affairs army Nathan Goonan is leaving to a still-to-be-announced gig.

We’re told by NAB insider’s that Goonan’s redeployment is far from an indication of upset by Thorburn. Quite the opposite.

“Goonan is on his way up, not out, and with good reason. He has a farm-boy manner with a rain-man mind,” a Docklands source tells us.

Indeed, we understand Thorburn has personally asked Goonan to move to an undisclosed area of the bank.

We understand the person Goonan will replace after next week’s result has recently been tapped on the shoulder and informed of the news. Surprise!

So who will replace Goonan and join Bastion’s Brian Walsh — Thorburn’s hired external help — as the co-manager of NAB’s $78 billion reputation?

We’re told a mystery someone has just signed on.

With the Kenneth Hayne royal commission still raging and a multi-million-dollar alleged fraud that, again allegedly, snaked all the way to Thorburn’s CEO office likely to detonate again any day now, the gig won’t be dull.