Back to the future for our top postie
Old friends are the best friends, so it was no surprise that stood-down Australia Post chief Christine Holgate joined the celebrations for outgoing director Marcus Blackmore as the businessman said his final farewell to his namesake vitamin company.
On a short video-cross, a relaxed Holgate appeared in the background on the millionaire’s couch in Blackmore’s lounge room in Sydney’s northern beaches, a reasonable drive from her own home in Mosman.
The idle Aussie Post chief looked on with a grin as a guest of her old boss Blackmore, who sent a final message to the group’s shareholders at its virtual annual general meeting.
The celebration marked the end of Blackmore’s 57-year tenure with the company, which was established by his late father Maurice, though he remains its biggest shareholder.
Holgate served as his chief executive for nine years and helped the group’s shares to run up to as much as $220 apiece in 2015 before her elevation to the top job at AusPost. In 2017 Holgate was running the show at the vitamin play while Blackmore took a six-month sabbatical. Holgate’s appearance on Tuesday was the first time she has popped up publicly, if only for a cameo, since her grilling before Thursday’s Senate estimates hearing, where the now $19,950 Cartier watch scandal was first revealed.
As the Pandora’s box of company card spending grows — including revelations that more than $34,000 was spent to regularly put her up at a suite at Melbourne’s Hyatt, along with spending on hair and make-up appointments — there were no signs of worry from Holgate as she shared in Blackmore’s farewell meeting.
The clock is now ticking on the month-long review from the outgoing Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s department and Paul Fletcher’s communications ministry, though they are yet to appoint any external law firm to the investigation.
Still, the trio, along with a further two obscured parties, had plenty to celebrate — not just Blackmore’s exit but also the company’s divestment of its Chinese medicine arm to Laurence McAllister’s McPherson’s for $27m.
It was Holgate, after all, who championed the $23m purchase of the unit back in 2016. It was called out as non-core as the now Alastair Symington-led group re-evaluates Blackmores’ priorities in the wake of COVID-19.
Blackmore was not the only farewell at the meeting, with chairman Brent Wallace also stepping down after 15 years, to be succeeded by board aficionado Anne Templeman-Jones, whose current roles include directorships at Commonwealth Bank, Worley and GUD.
Indeed, the juggle already seems like a lot for the new chair, who could not be present at the meeting alongside new board colleagues David Ansell and Christine Holman and instead appeared via a pre-recorded message — her duties as deputy chair at GUD taking precedence as it too held its AGM.
Going, going, Gonski
Australian business’s best-connected lawyer, investment banker and company director David Gonski will chair his final meeting of the ANZ board today.
His final task at the $55.5bn bank before handing over the chairmanship to fellow director Paul O’Sullivan, 60, will be to lead the board in its consideration of ANZ’s full-year accounts, which will be released to the sharemarket on Thursday.
According to the most recent disclosure on Gonski’s shares, which came in the 2019 annual report, the outgoing chair owns 31,488 ANZ shares that at Tuesday’s closing price were worth just a bit over a cool $615,000 — since joining the bank board in 2014 Gonski has developed plenty of skin in the game.
Former telco exec O’Sullivan, who is also a director of Coca Cola Amatil — where the board has a new $9.3bn takeover offer to contend with — takes over what has been a $660,000-a-year job at the bank.
His assumption of the role will free Gonski to potentially accept former UBS boss Matthew Grounds’ offer to become non-executive chair of new Sydney-based investment bank Barrenjoey Capital Partners, which is backed by Hamish Douglass’s Magellan Financial Group and Barclays.
It’ll then be over to O’Sullivan, the former-long serving Optus boss who is now a director of SingTel Optus and Western Sydney Airport, to chair the ANZ AGM scheduled for December 16 in Adelaide.
Sydney-based but Dublin-born O’Sullivan already knows Melbourne-headquartered ANZ from the inside out.
Along with his partner Federico Di Micoli, O’Sullivan has several mortgages with the bank. His portfolio includes properties in Bronte, Woollahra, Surry Hills and two in Burwood.
The couple also have several mortgages with two of their own private vehicles Athlone (NSW) Pty Ltd and Tasma (NSW) Pty Ltd.
Maybe they could ask the bank for a better deal.
Inside running
Melbourne’s southeastern suburb of Heatherton might seem a world away from the glitz and glamour of Crown at Barangaroo or on the banks of the Yarra, but might it be the perfect place for key exec Ishan Ratnam to hide?
Ratnam, who also goes by the name of Ishan Kunaratnam, for some years has been Crown’s Mr Fixit, right by major shareholder James Packer’s side when he visits Melbourne. Ratnam was on the scene when the billionaire decked a Crown security guard in Melbourne and has been a key part of the gaming group’s controversial VIP gaming operations.
Ratnam was a witness at former NSW judge Patricia Bergin’s unfolding inquiry into Crown’s suitability to hold the licence to operate a casino in NSW, where he described himself as Packer’s “butler, host and personal assistant”.
Via email Ratnam kept Packer abreast of developments in Crown’s international VIP business, all the while officially fulfilling the role of club manager at Crown’s Capital Golf Course, which the $5.7bn group bought from Melbourne millionaire property developer Lloyd Williams in 2014 for $67m.
Williams was instrumental in founding Crown Melbourne and was an executor of the late Kerry Packer’s will.
Crown chair Helen Coonan has already said that Ratnam’s senior colleagues at Crown, Australian resorts boss Barry Felstead and chief legal officer Joshua Preston, are headed out the door, but can Ratnam survive Coonan’s cull?
Working for Packer’s Crown for almost two decades has set Ratnam up well.
With his wife Cindi Lee Kunaratnam, Ratnam has a portfolio of Melbourne real estate that includes a home in Prahran, a home in Brighton as well as an expansive luxury holiday estate at Merricks on the Mornington Peninsula that boasts its own vineyard and pool.
Margin Call suspects a working life for Ratnam at the Crown golf course might not be enough for the plugged-in executive.
But the question is whether Crown will be able to let the ultimate insider go.
Perhaps Ratnam knows too much.
Feeding Nomad diners the little white lies
Patrons don’t exactly line up for Nomad restaurants since its co-owner displayed a Nazi swastika at a rally, but an assurance he’s relinquished control of the rebadged eateries is hard to swallow.
Not targeting electoral seats: Do you think we’re simple, Simon?
In one of the most blatant cases of gaslighting voters in a while, Simon Holmes a Court has declared his Climate 200 doesn’t actually target seats come election time.