Australia Post feud with Christine Holgate nears resolution
Has one of the country’s most bitter corporate feuds finally been resolved?
We hear there’s been a preliminary breakthrough in long-running mediation talks between former chief Christine Holgate and Australia Post.
Holgate, we’re told, should expect an apology any day now.
The two parties began mediation in May, with high-profile Sydney silk Arthur Moses in Holgate’s camp.
As part of the negotiations, the postal service’s board stipulated the outcome, including any financial compensation, be made public. That’s expected as early as this week.
The departure of Holgate over the Cartier watch affair has turned into an unseemly spectacle for Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo, who has now been publicly accused of unlawfully standing her down.
A Senate inquiry has recommended Di Bartolomeo resign, though to date he is showing no signs of budging.
Things aren’t looking too rosy over at the Prime Minister’s office either, with that inquiry also calling on Scott Morrison to apologise to Holgate for the “she should go” treatment after she disclosed the expensive executive gifts in November.
Coalition members on the inquiry, unsurprisingly, did not agree with that finding.
Still, mediation between Holgate and her former employer has dragged on for two months, with plenty of speculation the asking price for settlement was serious money.
No word from our sources about what payout – if any – Holgate will get, though she has already scored a new gig at private-equity owned rival Global Express, where public disclosure isn’t standing in the way of a hefty annual salary or any potential bonuses.
It’s already been a pull for several of her former staffers too; Margin Call revealed last month at least eight of the group’s most senior posties are headed out the door after her and at least two of those to work at Global Express.
Neither AusPost nor Holgate could provide comment before our deadline – guess that just leaves us to wonder who has really won in this whole affair.
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Big rap for investors
Good fortune just keeps coming for all those in the web of Afterpay, whose takeover by the Jack Dorsey-led Square is set to cement a tidy $5bn payday for founders Anthony Eisen and now US-based Nick Molnar.
Taking a look closer though, it seems the local outfit’s links to the US payments giant have been bubbling under the surface much longer than just the six weeks of recent discussions.
A glance at the group’s options recipients gives some hint as to key names in brokering the mega $39bn deal.
Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers for one.
Back in 2019 Summers, an adviser to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, was appointed to Afterpay’s US advisory board, and along with it snagged a lucrative bundle of 100,000 options.
At the time, Summers noted he would “work with the leadership team to make the most of the opportunity before them”.
Fast forward to the present and that opportunity has seen Square, a company Summers has been the director of for the best part of a decade, come a-knocking.
Summers holds 21,656 units of the Nasdaq-listed stock, worth more than $US5.4m. He was only awarded the latest trance of 1000 shares last month.
But the links don’t stop there.
Keen watchers of the stock may also recall the involvement of rapper Jay Z’s management company Roc Nation, and its chief Jay Brown, in the then-burgeoning stock.
Back in 2019 Brown too was issued with a tranche of options.
Any doubts about just what advice the event management firm, which also counts Shakira, DJ Khaled and Nick Jonas among its clients, could have provided have surely now faded, for its links to Jay-Z, also a director at Square, may prove to be useful too.
It is Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and his foreign investment board that can now give the deal the green light.
We’re not sure whether he dabbles in a little rap or hip hop himself.
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Templar talk
Most agree that the Knights Templar disbanded long ago, but Margin Call may have just found a hint at a resurgence.
It’s in none other than Sydney’s northern beaches with Liberal member for McKellar Jason Falinksi.
On second thoughts, perhaps the 50-year-old is just a history buff.
The member for Mackellar last week updated his register of interests, noting he had established one Templar Management, serving as the company’s only director and shareholder.
No word on just what the new venture may entail, though we hope it includes the full knight’s regalia.
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Water works
After an unceremonious departure at Boral, it seems former chairman Kathryn Fagg is already off and on to her next new adventure.
Fagg’s exit on Friday, two months ahead of schedule thanks to Seven and new chair Ryan Stokes’ aggressive bidding, means she has all the more time to devote to her latest charitable venture, which she has chaired since April.
The 58-year-old is no stranger to a little philanthropy.
She’s entrenched in the Melbourne scene as a director of the Myer Foundation, Grattan Institute and Melbourne Recital Hall.
Her latest, though, is a marked shift, a project dubbed Watertrust Australia, with a mission to improve the decision making process when it comes to the country’s inland waterways and catchments.
Supporters like her associates the Myer family, along with Ian Potter and the Besen family – of Gandal-Besen dynasty – have together pledged $31m to fund the project for the next 10 years.
But all the wealth in the country doesn’t mean they’ve got an easy task in finding skilled directors – the group taking to LinkedIn to seek expressions of interest to work on Fagg’s board.
The group is seeking five independent directors, to be supported by an influence advisory committee, with a “strong affinity with the group’s mission to improve water and catchment policy decision making”.
Here’s hoping there’s a little less of the infighting she’s been used to.
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