Kerry Stokes cuts ties with Charlie Aitken’s AIM
They say all good things must come to an end, including the generous backing of billionaire Kerry Stokes, at least when it comes to Sydney fund manager Charlie Aitken.
It was in 2017 that Stokes bought a 19.99 per cent stake in Aitken’s Aitken Investment Management vehicle, with Stokes’s longstanding lieutenant and former federal minister Warwick Smith launched onto the AIM board as a director.
That was only after a false start between the two high-profile men only two years earlier.
But Margin Call understands that the investment has come to an end, with Stokes selling out of Aiken’s baby and Smith at the end of last month officially resigning his position as a director of the group.
The billionaire, who has just wrangled control of Boral, first bought his stake in AIM via his Wroxby Pty Ltd out of Perth.
Seven Group executive chair Stokes backed Aitken at the same time as former Crown Resorts chair Robert Rankin bought a similar-sized stake in the fund manager, with Rankin investing via his Pacific Point Partners.
The supportive investors then endured a period of very poor performance in 2018 from Aitken’s AIM, after which changes were made in early 2019 to the group’s processes, investment team and portfolio.
While a subsequent turnaround in performance hasn’t been enough to hold Stokes, in contrast Rankin, who is based out of the UK, remains a stakeholder and a director on the AIM board.
Unlike his no-show to give evidence at the Bergin inquiry into Crown at the end of last year, Rankin is understood to remain an active, albeit virtual, participant in AIM affairs and board meetings.
Who knows when we will see the elusive former investment banker back on Aussie soil.
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King’s home stay
As more than half the country faces lockdown, it is tough times for retailers, and even more so for the likes of pressured department store Myer.
The most recent spate of Covid-19 restrictions adds to a heavy load for the group’s executive team and Jo-Anne Stephenson-led board, not least due to a number of director vacancies on top of the retailer’s sales slowdown.
Horrible timing then for what Margin Call hears is an emergency trip home to Fort Lauderdale for chief executive John King.
Word is King, who relocated from the beachside city in Florida to steer the overhaul of Myer in 2018, has been performing his chiefly duties even more remotely from his home in Fort Lauderdale for the past three weeks, close to his wife as she undergoes treatment for cancer.
“As with most of Australian businesses and their executives at the moment, John is working remotely and is continuing to fulfil all of his duties as managing director and CEO,” the company said in a statement.
“He remains fully engaged with his executive, the Myer board and is attending to all of his normal commitments.”
The couple, who still have plenty of family members in the US, have asked that their privacy be respected.
To be fair, if social media is any indication, you would think the UK-born King had been there the whole time – his LinkedIn profile still listing his base as Fort Lauderdale.
The trip comes after Margin Call pointed out just last month that King had taken up residence in a serviced apartment in Southbank, the same area he first settled in after his initial move to Melbourne.
However, those in the know assure us the trip across the seas is only temporary, with King having booked a return flight, expected to be within weeks and which will be accompanied by the mandatory two-week stay in hotel quarantine.
You would have to hope so, the 14-hour time difference no doubt a strain for those lengthy exec meetings as they plot just what to do with increasingly vocal major shareholder Solomon Lew.
Despite the circumstances, Lew continues to push for a purge of Myer’s board, earlier this week scoring the retailer’s share register and opening the gates for its lawyers Arnold Bloch Leibler to start directly lobbying investors.
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Coates calls tune
It’s clear now who federal Sports Minister Richard Colbeck and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk answer to.
Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates.
Live from Tokyo talking to RN’s Fran Kelly just before 7am Tokyo time on Thursday, the also Aged Care Minister revealed he would be attending the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday night.
But that’s only after what Colbeck described as an “intervention” on Wednesday from 32-year AOC veteran Coates, who instructed Colbeck and Palaszczuk that they absolutely must be at the gala affair.
“Being here I should be attending the opening ceremony,” Colbeck told Kelly after she asked him about being ordered by Coates to get along to Friday night’s event.
“I hadn’t had a chance to confirm that finally with the Premier last night, but I was sitting next to her when John Coates made his particular intervention.”
Coates used a late-night presser to insist Palaszczuk, Colbeck and their Australian delegation attend the opening ceremony to “learn” about how the global spectacle – which he said cost at least $75m – operated.
“You are going to the opening ceremony,” Coates declared.
“There will be an opening and a closing ceremony in 2032 and all of you, everyone there, has to understand the traditional parts of that, what’s involved in an opening ceremony.
“None of you are staying home and sitting in your room.”
By late Thursday Coates issued a statement saying his comments had been misinterpreted.
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