Joe Longo did a fine job of drawing the money crowd to a boardroom lunch at Arnold Bloch Leibler’s Melbourne offices on Tuesday. Not that he spoke of anything spicy, even with the cover of Chatham House rules.
Attendees said interfacing with the ASIC chair was pleasant, enjoyable, although he was most eager to talk about a discussion paper his agency had released a few weeks ago – “Australia’s evolving capital markets: A discussion paper on the dynamics between public and private markets”.
Between that tour-de-force and the customary postprandial crash of blood-sugar levels, we really don’t know how anyone managed to stay awake.
Just kidding, Joe, everyone loves a good regulatory road map.
Joining the fun were billionaires Solomon Lew and Alex Waislitz, still fighting to keep his fortune away from ex-wife Heloise Pratt. It’s a good thing John Stensholt’s Rich List comes out on Friday because who knows if Waislitz will still be a billionaire this time next year.
Also at the table were the first two letters on BGH Capital’s nameplate, Robin Bishop and Ben Gray, plus Tanarra’s John Wylie and Nufarm chair John Gillam, which is fun when you consider Wylie paired up with Allan Gray and L1 Capital just a few months ago to agitate for Nufarm to spin off its crop protection unit (a move the trio are still pushing for). No hard feelings between them, we’re told.
Corporate gravedigger Mark Korda made it back to Melbourne for Longo’s powwow. He’s been deep in the South Australian town of Whyalla working with ABL’s Leon Zwier on the fiasco of Sanjeev Gupta’s OneSteel collapse. Zwier comprised one-third of the ABL contingent in the room, along with firm chieftain Mark Leibler and partner Jeremy Leibler. Former High Court justice Kenneth Hayne was also in the house, although no sign of Goldman Sachs chair Josh Frydenberg, which is just as well. Are the two of them still frosty over that snubbed handshake? It’s only been six years.
PolyNovo chair-for-now David Williams made it, too, almost unrecognisable without his ballistic helmet, as did Luminis Partners’ Simon McConnell and esteemed barrister Alan Archibald KC, famous for milking every dollar out of Telstra – $3.47m over the four-year lifespan of its infamous C7 case. The telco was represented by non-executive director Elana Rubin, who also happens to be an RBA director, but only on the bank’s governance board, to which she was recently bumped by Jim Chalmers, and not the rate-setting one. Which meant she didn’t have any mail on whether they’re holding or not in two weeks.
Confusing records
Speaking of Zwier, a bundle of emails released by the Federal Court on Tuesday gave a glimpse into a battle between the pugnacious lawyer and one of Gupta’s legal representatives. Their beef was over access to OneSteel’s books, and in news that will surprise no one it appears there aren’t any – not in any organised form.
So said Gupta’s lawyer, Laura Johns, partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, in an email to Zwier on Monday: “OneSteel is a single entity within a very large corporate group that, like most corporate groups, uses centralised corporate record keeping functions. As a consequence, many books and records are maintained on a group basis rather than on a single entity basis.”
Yes, learning that OneSteel had mingled its records within its bloated parent group, such that administrators couldn’t form an adequate financial position for the steelworks, is consistent with Gupta’s tendency for fiasco. And it explains why OneSteel was such a slipshod operation. Traffic lights at the site were malfunctional and employees were reduced to bringing in their own toilet paper.
Johns again: “Separating out OneSteel specific books and records from those of its immediate parent Liberty Primary Metals Australia (LPMA) has been a large administrative task and is ongoing.”
It’s why Zwier applied to the Federal Court to push out the date of OneSteel’s second creditors meeting, which was scheduled for this week, and why Zwier and Johns were ping-ponging emails to each other 24 hours earlier; Zwier was collecting evidence for his court application, a fact he eventually made clear to Johns.
“Laura, I haven’t received the courtesy of a response to the requests for additional information and documents,” he wrote.
“I currently intend to exhibit our communications to an affidavit.”
The reply, which made the scope of the matter clear, landed in his inbox that afternoon.
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