Aussie John Symond’s boy toys

Illustration: Rod Clement

Home loan king John Symond has bought a new Bombardier Global Express (retail price: $80 million).

The home loan entrepreneur Symond’s private jet — which he took possession of earlier in the year — will sit alongside his $100m Point Piper trophy home and the $130m, 73-metre super yacht Hasna.

Aussie John Symond’s 73m super yacht Hasna.

The 70-year-old Symond has achieved the Australian richie trifecta.

Life is good for Symond, who in 2016 married his forty-something wife Amber (whose sharp dress sense fellow fashionista Stephen Mayne is always banging on about).

The couple last year relocated to London, although Symond — now liberated from commercial aviation — flies back to Sydney every month for board meetings of the Aussie home loan business he founded in 1992 before selling for a motza to Ian Narev’s Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Symond is a rare individual to have made more from an Australian big four bank than one of their CEOs.

Mike Smith (the one who looked like a cartoonist’s parody of a fat cat banker), for example, was paid $88m by ANZ’s generous shareholders. That was catfood compared to the fortune bestowed on Symond by Narev and CBA’s munificent shareholders, last valued at
$673m on the Stensholt Index.

On top of his business meetings, Symond has various antipodean family commitments such as his daughter Deborah’s wedding on Hamilton Island last month to property scion Ned O’Neil.

Throw in the odd weekender in Las Vegas and the private plane was a necessity.

The most remarkable aspect of Aussie’s Bombardier acquisition is that it took him so long.

Beefcake on Coke menu

Spooked by interest in Catherine Brenner, diabetes and tooth decay, manufacturer Coca-Cola Amatil brought along more than a dozen goons to its shareholder meeting.

The thoroughly hands-on ­approach by the hired muscle made for an earthly contrast to the heavenly location for yesterday’s annual general meeting — Mary MacKillop Place in North Sydney.

If Australia’s first and only saint watched on from above, what would she have made of the scrum?

Presumably the goon squad — authorised by chair Ilana Atlas, whom shareholders last year paid $408,371 — was an ­attempt to stop the sugar water bottler’s annual meeting descending into a circus thanks to the suddenly raised profile of Atlas’s fellow David Gonski protege Brenner.

So how did Team Atlas’s strategy go? A generous assessment would call it a mixed result.

Before the North Sydney gathering, former AMP chair Brenner announced she would not seek another term on the Coca-Cola Amatil board for which she was last year paid $254,388. By the time Brenner steps down next year, she will have been in the role for 11 years, so there was nothing premature about her departure.

After gaining entry to the packed hall — despite initial protest by Atlas’s doorman — Margin Call was able to briefly evade the $6.5 billion company’s arbitrary photo ban.

How else to get a snap so Melbourne-based fashion consultant Stephen Mayne could review the outfits of Atlas, Brenner, John Borghetti (impeccably groomed as always) and their fellow directors?

More successful were the ­efforts of the Coca-Cola Amatil Goon Squad who employed everything short of a headlock to stop Margin Call talking to Atlas.

We had wanted to ask the chair whether Luminis partner Simon Mordant was advising the beverage company.

Why else — except perhaps lending support to his former ­investment banking colleague Brenner — was the stylishly dressed investment banker Mordant along for the first hour of yesterday’s meeting?

Mordant wouldn’t comment. Atlas was escorted away from us so couldn’t answer.

The leader of the Goons just grunted before trying to twist our arm off.

Brenner was even more ferociously guarded.

Team Atlas’s scheme to sneak her out the back door went perfectly to plan — until the ABC’s Carrington Clarke caught her running for the Coca-Cola Amatil carpark over the road. It was a Coca-Cola Amatil PR special. What were they thinking?

Also representing Michelle Guthrie’s cut-to-the-bone ABC news division was a team from Sally Neighbour’s Four Corners.

Ominously for Brenner’s former AMP board colleagues, it seems the scandalous wealth manager has caught the interest of Aunty’s feared investigative team. Uh oh.

High fibre

NBN Co has a new head of corporate affairs, Felicity Ross.

Now it just needs a new CEO to replace former Vodafone boss Bill Morrow, who is sailing off to new seas after four stormy years at Australia’s largest infrastructure project.

Ross — who joins from the David Thodey-chaired start-up hub Jobs for NSW — will in July take over from Karina Keisler, who followed Morrow from Vodafone to the government-owned broadband behemoth.

Who’s the next Bill Morrow for the NBN? Picture: Kym Smith

So who do NBN chairman Ziggy Switkowski and his distinguished board — which includes the PM’s former chief of staff Drew Clarke, iiNet founder turned Seven West director Michael Malone and ABC chairman Justin Milne — have in mind to replace Morrow after his departure?

An interim internal candidate is possible. Ziggy could once again act as executive chairman. Otherwise either of Morrow’s executives Peter Ryan or Stephen Rue could steer the NBN ship past the next federal election.

There’s no shortage of options externally. Former Telstra executive Gordon Ballantyne (for now the endangered boss of Ben Gray’s $4.35bn ASX-listed toy Healthscope) will probably soon be on the jobs market. Although if the architect of the Myer float Gray won’t have him, we can’t imagine Ballantyne will get the nod from Ziggy, Ziggy’s portfolio minister Mitch Fifield or Ziggy’s previous portfolio minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Former Optus chief Kevin Russell is more credible, although he has been tipped for the top job at chairman Bob Mansfield’s Vocus Group.

Another candidate is former Telstra executive Kate McKenzie, who is running New Zealand telco Chorus, a listed outfit that is helping build NZ’s more modest, government-subsidised broadband network.

McKenzie was in the running to replace Thodey in 2015 for the top job at the ever-shrinking Telstra, but missed out to Andy Penn. Hasn’t it been a long three years since that fateful decision?