Big Biotech jealous of the miners, can you dig that? Bansal in a quandary

The bronze commemorative statue of Kalgoorlie's most famous prospector, Patrick “Paddy” Hannan.

It came as a surprise even to us, but who knew of the longstanding jealousy harboured by Big Biotech against their wildly successful foes in mining?

The miners, of course, are a well-established crew. They have their clubs, their conferences. Literally everyone’s heard of the Diggers and Dealers Mining Forum, a renowned and debaucherous affair held annually in Kalgoorlie which attracts a Vegas buffet of characters, and which seems to live by the spirit of whatever-happens-in-Kal-stays-in-Kal.

The far more muted Biotech analog is The Bioshares Summit with its circle of committed fans, obviously not as renowned, and not even coming close to rivalling the Roman orgy of drinking attached to the D&D and the mining jocks. Still, a growing base of attendees.

Enter Melbourne-based PR consultant Rudi Michelson, founder of Monsoon Communications and biotech rep for 20 years, who was overheard last week throwing around suggestions for a total recasting of the Bioshares Summit.

For one thing, it’s being held this year away from ski fields (a first) and on the miners’ home turf instead, in Fremantle, Western Australia, the alleged purpose being to promote biotech as a safer investment than some of its small-cap cowboys – or at least those plummeting lithium stocks.

Michelson’s got some zany ideas though. In what we believe was just a gag, he suggested informally dubbing the event Druggies & Dealers, which is cute as a throwdown to the D&D. Will it catch on as insider slang?

A more genuine suggestion, however, was telling Bioshares to drop the term ‘‘Summit’’ altogether, mainly because it made more sense when the conference was held amid the ski fields of Thredbo, Queenstown and, last year, at the base of Mt Wellington, in Tasmania.

Freo, as we all know, lacks any claim to a vertiginous drop – unless it’s cobbled together from the liquor and beer bottles expected to be drained at the three-day event, to be held in July.

And still no word yet on what it will actually be called, for now.

Stokes’ pincer move

The smackdown of Kerry and Ryan Stokes’ bid to gobble up the quarter-odd stake still available in Boral may just signal the death knell for CEO Vik Bansal, despite his turnaround efforts over the past 18 months.

In rejecting the offer, the Boral NEDS, led by former CSR chief Rob Sindel, have basically put Bansal in an unenviable position, wedging him between Stokes, who appointed Bansal CEO in 2022, and the board members who knocked back the offer.

Seven owns 72.6 per cent of the company.
A successful bid would have seen it subsumed in the wider Seven Group, with Bansal relegated to a divisional head in the conglomerate.

It’s not hard to believe that Bansal, 58, wants to keep running a large, ASX-listed entity and not some limb attached to a broader Seven mothership.

Boral chief executive Vik Bansal is caught between two competing interests.

It’s a mindset that aligns the CEO with at least a few minority investors.

A mop-up deal with Stokes would have cruelled Bansal’s hopes, and if their bid fails then Bansal will be forced to sit at the Boral table across from a most displeased Stokes, who would hardly be cool with the fact that Seven’s deal was stymied by the rest of the board.

How long, in that case, would Stokes tolerate Bansal?

The billionaire family are known combatants, and Bansal, as a perceived foe, wouldn’t last long.

Bansal might consider himself still too young to retire, but perhaps the Stokes family’s rejected corporate play will give the executive plenty of time to contemplate the future.