BHP boss Andrew Mackenzie a rarity in big business

Illustration: Rod Clement.

All agree that BHP Billiton boss Andrew Mackenzie’s response to the Samarco dam disaster just over a year ago was close to flawless. He was on the first flight to Brazil, spent days on the ground meeting staff, inspecting the damage and briefing the media, and he’s made sure to return to see the recovery operation himself.

It was textbook disaster management — a stark contrast to the blundering performance of the then Neil Balnaves-led ­Ardent Leisure in the days after the Dreamworld tragedy.

BHP Billiton boss Andrew Mackenzie at a press conference after the Samarco disaster.

But what hasn’t emerged until now is the action the humble Scotsman took to make sure he personally felt a financial penalty for Samarco.

In the weeks before the Carolyn Hewson-chaired BHP remuneration committee was due to consider his 2016 pay, Mackenzie quietly approached Hewson and requested he get no bonus.

The unusual act — almost a John Calvin approach to executive pay — is confirmed in the fine print of the BHP remuneration report.

Hewson notes in her report that the remuneration committee exercised its discretion to ­approve a zero outcome for Mackenzie.

But then she notes: “This outcome accorded with an indication the CEO had previously provided to the committee that he thought a zero STI outcome for FY2016 would be an appropriate alignment of his short-term remuneration outcome for FY2016 with the shareholder experience and the interests of the company’s other stakeholders.’’

Sure Mackenzie — a former trustee of British social policy think tank Demos — took home a handy $US2.4 million last year, but that was half what he was paid a year earlier.

Hewson’s report also reveals that Mackenzie’s performance against the original scorecard KPIs would have warranted an outcome for FY2016 of 58 per cent of the target, which would have been several million ­dollars.

It’s an interesting footnote to Rio Tinto chair Jan du Plessis ’s recent appearance before a ­parliamentary committee examining corporate governance in Britain.

As well as confessing to Theresa May’s parliamentary colleagues that he had trouble understanding some aspects of Rio’s executive pay, du Plessis had this advice for his peers: “Big companies are going to have to work harder and harder to earn the respect and trust of the societies in which they operate.”

Hard to argue with that. Perhaps the Rio chair should pop into his rival’s Melbourne headquarters next time he’s in town. Call it a study tour.

Counting down days

This is a momentous holiday season for TPG Capital managing partner Ben Gray.

Rufus Black from Ormond College with TPG managing partner Ben Gray.

While the rest of us are counting shopping days and groaning about Michael Buble’s omnipresent Christmas album, the veteran private equiteer is crossing off dates until he exits TPG for the last time in just over a fortnight. The departure’s been brewing for more than a year. Now there’s little more than gardening leave in between Gray formally establishing his own private equity shop with departing TPG colleague Simon Harle in September next year.

The pair have been slowly unwinding their responsibilities at the private equity giant.

Last month Harle resigned as a director of TPG Capital (Australia), but is still on the job for the group out of 101 Collins and will endure as a director of the newly floated chicken business Ingham’s.

Gray is the son of former Tasmanian Liberal premier Robin Gray. After a stint at Melbourne University’s finance and banking factory Ormond College, he joined TPG in 2004.

He was then in Singapore for the firm before returning to Melbourne in 2014 to oversee the mammoth residential construction on South Yarra’s Avoca Street, which is now complete.

The new fund will be Gray and Harle’s next major project.

And although they must officially sit on their hands until October, be sure they’ve already been in the ear of Melbourne’s high-net-worth families, lining up commitments for the new fund.

More of Moore

Meanwhile, private equity counterpart the former local Carlyle boss Simon Moore is embracing the Bondi lifestyle after leaving his firm in May.

Former local Carlyle boss Simon Moore. Picture: Britta Campion.

Moore recently traded in his Bronte view for one overlooking the Icebergs, in the same whitewashed block once occupied by insider traders Oliver Curtis and John Hartman at the height of their wrongdoings.

It’s the same building that houses the apartment then model and actress Kate Fischer (now Tziporah Malkah) got as part of her settlement when her engagement to billionaire James Packer ended in 1998.

On Sunday Moore, 48, stepped on to the sand to tackle the Macquarie Bank-sponsored 2.2km Bondi to Bronte ocean swim, logging an impressive 32-odd minutes for a top 20 finish in his age category.

As for making money, Moore is getting on with his own affairs via his new Colinton Investments. (Colinton is his middle name.)

Kitching corner

A fresh update on our nation’s newest senator, Victoria’s Kimberley Kitching.

Andrew Landeryou, founder of the Vexnews website.

The former Health Sector Union official’s much anticipated filing to the upper house register of interests revealed very little of Kitching’s life and times.

A little car finance here, a dormant company vehicle based out of a building owned by Aussie songbird Kylie Minogue there. Little else.

Disappointingly, there was no mention of her fellow Labor operative husband Andrew Landeryou, the son of Cain minister Bill Landeryou. That’s partly a function of her being in the Senate. There’s no box for spouses on the interest forms of our secretive senators — unlike the registers for our lower house members.

But, disclosed or not, more can be pieced together about the controversial political couple.

Having lost their multi-million-dollar mansion home in refined Parkville as a result of business debts owed by Landeryou to retail billionaire Solly Lew, the bankrupted former lawyer Kitching and her bankrupted husband appear to now be living in a rental in the inner northern Melbourne suburb of Pascoe Vale South, in Peter Khalil’s Division of Wills.

That’s right next door to their close friend Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in Maribyrnong, the man whose “captain’s call” got Kitching the $200,000-a-year Senate gig.

Kitching’s filing also doesn’t mention that Landeryou, who was arrested in the early hours of election day in July after allegedly defacing Liberal election materials in Labor member Michael Danby’s Melbourne Ports, appears to be having a fresh crack at private enterprise.

Former political blogger Landeryou has just created a new vehicle, Lan Ventures Pty Ltd, of which he is sole director and shareholder.

We can’t wait for news of what he’s cooking up.

Culleton’s counsel

In his Darryl Kerrigan-inspired performance in the High Court in November, One Nation senator Rod Culleton revealed his latest legal dilemma.

One Nation senator Rod Culleton speaks to the media outside the High Court. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch.

“The issue, in all due respect, your Honour, is trying to find senior counsel that loves One Nation,” Culleton told then chief justice Robert French.

Thankfully that problem was solved before Culleton’s second appearance yesterday at the High Court — although it was only sorted days before the senator appeared before new chief justice Susan Kiefel.

Representing Culleton in highest court was Peter King, the sitting Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull rolled in Wentworth ahead of the 2004 election. The commonwealth paid for King’s services.

It was King’s second dramatic High Court appearance this year. In May, he represented Family First senator Bob Day in Day’s unsuccessful challenge of the Turnbull government’s changes to Senate voting laws.

King also previously represented Culleton in October in the Armidale Court House in the case of the $7.50 car key.

So does the ex-Liberal MP King love One Nation? Seems that’s a stretch. It’s more that King is a champion of diverse voices in the parliament — and if they cause his nemesis-cum-PM a headache, so much the better.