Bellamy’s formula for failure

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Baby milk formula manufacturer Bellamy’s Organics is about as popular as a python at a daycare centre right now.

Yesterday its stock fell for a third consecutive day, as investors remain disturbed by the “business update” it released on Friday.

Bellamy's Organic chief executive Laura McBain. Picture: Supplied.

That missive revealed that Bellamy’s executives had profoundly misread the “tea leaves” of the Chinese regulatory market they operate in.

The share price of the Rob Woolley-chaired Bellamy’s has since halved to $6.41, as many questioned whether — for all their big-noting in the financial press — these guys and gals might have been a bit overhyped.

With that as background, spare a thought for the outfit we have learned is running a recruitment process for an executive position — the head of corporate affairs, of all things — to report to Laura McBain, Bellamy’s CEO and Sinologist, at the company’s headquarters in Launceston, Tasmania. What an assignment!

Luring executives to the north of Tassie is tricky at the best of times.

Imagine doing it for a firm that’s had more than half a billion dollars of market cap evaporate, is informally under review by Greg Medcraft’s corporate regulator ASIC for interesting trading activity and for a role whose main function will be mopping up an inherited mess for the foreseeable future.

We understand the search has been going on for a few months. Good luck with that.

Any Porter in a storm

Political circles in Western Australia lit up with the news: the ambitious federal Social Services minister Christian Porter has bought a house in Perth’s well-to-do Wembley in Julie Bishop’s electorate of Curtin.

The new place is almost 60km — or an hour’s drive when the traffic’s bad — from his electorate of Pearce, in the northeast of the WA capital.

What’s he up to?

After all, Porter has form with dramatic career changes.

In 2012 he announced his plan to go federal and contest the seat of Pearce.

The former Clayton Utz lawyer was then the state Treasurer and Attorney-General, as well as Premier Colin Barnett’s likely successor. He’d be running the state by now had he stuck around.

Apparently, this is a less dramatic development.

He’s not about to replace the Foreign Minister in her blue ribbon seat. And his main family residence remains up in Yanchep in his electorate.

The new Wembley town house — a 10-minute drive from the CBD — is to cut his commute to the Commonwealth’s offices in the city. Just as important, it will make his various media appearances — particularly for broadcast interviews with media based on the east coast — slightly less barbaric.

With the three-hour time difference over spring and summer, a 7am (AEDT) appearance on Sunrise is a ghastly 4am, local time. Cutting the drive to the studio by almost an hour is a small, but wise, mercy.

The new place is also something of a return to his roots.

Back in 1999, the then 28-year-old Porter put neighbouring Wembley Downs on the map when it was listed as his address on his Cleo Bachelor of the Year finalist profile.

Pollie worth crackers

Having submitted them on Monday, right on deadline, the statement of registrable interests for Bill Shorten ’s controversial captain’s pick in the Senate, Kimberley Kitching, was finally released yesterday.

Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas.

The eagerly awaited document is such a scanty thing, it’s a wonder it took so long to submit.

There’s nothing for her expansive network of enemies in the ALP to work with.

In fact, there’s almost nothing there at all. No real estate, no shares — just a Toyota bought on car finance.

It’s the legacy of the bruising encounter Kitching and her husband Andrew Landeryou had with retail billionaire Solomon Lew, who pursued them for $3 million.

Lew ended up bankrupting them both, along the way seizing and selling their $1.8m mansion in leafy Parkville — a Victorian pile fans of ABC’s period detective show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries know as Phryne Fisher’s digs.

Legal costs

Meanwhile, there has been an addition to the register of Terri Butler, the MP in Kevin Rudd’s former seat of Griffith.

Margin Call: Terri Butler

“Litigation on foot in the Brisbane Magistrates Court: claim against Butler,” reads the addition.

That’s the $150,000 defamation action taken against her by 25-year-old Queensland University of Technology law student Calum Thwaites, who is alleging she smeared him as a racist on the ABC’s Q&A.

Butler added the litigation update on her register after Thwaites rejected her apology.

The MP now has until December 23 to file her defence to the defamation proceedings — not the best start to her summer break from parliament.

A former lawyer, Butler has reached out to her old shop Maurice Blackburn to represent her in the action and told us there was no plan for them to act for her pro bono.

For now, she’s contemplating a cost proposal.

“As soon as it’s signed, details will be sent to the register,” she told us.

Peddling technology

Compared to climbing to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro four years ago, the weekend’s Great Victorian Bike Ride must have been a breeze for billionaire investor Alex Waislitz.

Alex Waislitz on Mt Kilimanjaro.

His Thorney Investment team — including his brother Avee and Martin Casey — took to the pavement for the largest multi-day ride in the Southern Hemisphere, which takes in Halls Gap, Geelong, Dunkeld, the 12 Apostles and Queenscliff.

It was a journey modelled on Waislitz’s ride in the Israeli desert last year, which also raised money for charity.

Sure to have been on Waislitz’s mind during the latest ride was his new tech fund, which is expected to do far better than its minimum raising size of $25m. Waislitz himself was in the Melbourne office of stockbroking firm Morgans late last week spruiking the backdoor listing of the new fund, to be known as Thorney Technologies.

The name change will be voted on by shareholders of its former incarnation Australian Renewable Fuels this Friday.

In tune with clients

Elsewhere in Pratt land, when not dining with fellow billionaire Bill Gates, Anthony Pratt has been busy entertaining his top clients. The top 50 Sydney customers of his Visy Industries paper, packaging and recycling group were treated to dinner at his Circular Quay apartment last week, where the entertainment was provided by none other than Kate Ceberano, Missy Higgins and his sister Heloise — fresh from her recent New York performance.

Heloise Pratt and Gina Rinehart at a recent gala event in New York.

A night later the part-time music promoter Pratt and his performers travelled south to do the same for Visy’s top Melbourne clients at the Pratt family home, Raheen, the 19th century Italianate mansion.