Big end of town backs Big Orange

Cartoon: Rod Clement

He might not be the bookies favourite, but more than $10 billion worth of business smarts were backing the five-year-old gelding Big Orange in the Melbourne Cup.

“Always bet on orange,” Visy executive chairman Anthony Pratt told us ahead of a trackside appearance with his partner Claudine Revere.

And who would doubt the country’s most successful orange-haired businessman?

Pratt’s Visy empire has flourished under his bright leadership since he took over after his father Richard passed away in 2009.

The company has ridden the recovery in American manufacturing, boldly expanding — with superb timing — into a market many of his business peers had written off as withering. The proof is in the swelling fortune — last valued at $10.35 billion.

Just to be clear — and before we cause an outbreak of panic among his mother Jeanne Pratt, sisters Heloise Waislitz and Fiona Geminder, and the rest of the esteemed Melbourne family — Pratt is not putting the whole fortune on the line. We understand his punt will be a more prudent expression of orange solidarity.

The billionaire is far from alone in backing Big Orange.

Also on board are Minister for Revenue and Financial Services Kelly O’Dwyer, Tatts chairman Harry Boon (who will be working hard in the gaming group’s Brisbane office) and, we hear, BHP Billiton boss Andrew Mackenzie, who will get the result in London where he’s attending the London Metal Exchange’s annual hullabaloo.

Who else was Mackenzie — the boss of a miner dubbed the Big Australian, which has an orange logo — going to back?

An eye for beauty

As well as having the richest spectator at Flemington backing him, Big Orange (who is starting from barrier seven) also has one of the more interesting owners in the field today.

The horse is owned by Bill Gredley, the British property mogul turned racehorse owner.

The 83-year-old Gredley was born in London’s East End and amassed a fortune last valued at £194 million ($310m) on the 2016 Sunday Times Rich list.

After building a fortune from humble post-war roots, Gredley has turned his attention to owning horses and commissioning art.

Among his lavish collection is a painting he commissioned from a Polish artist of the hundred most ugly faces he could imagine.

“When I look at it, I try to match the faces with those of well-known people, or people I know,” Gredley recently told Thoroughbred Owner and Breeder.

It’s fun to be rich.

Bondi Beach top tip

Hancock Prospecting boss Gina Rinehart — who will be joining her billionaire friend Pratt at Flemington today — was keeping her race tips to herself yesterday.

But what are the tips from our horse-loving heavies?

Suncorp chair and Tabcorp director Ziggy Switkowski likes the quinella of Bondi Beach and Oceanographer.

“Maybe it’s the aquatic connection,” Ziggy explained of his selection. “More likely (it’s) the serious stables and good recent form over staying distances.”

Alberto Calderon, the boss of explosives group Orica, might be Melbourne-based, but he’s also backing Bondi Beach.

“Bondi Beach is one of my favourite places in Australia and one of the best places to go for a run!” Calderon explained. Plus, it’s just outside the top three — a handy spot in a “significantly unpredictable race”.

Racing mad Westpac chair Lindsay Maxsted — fresh from his horse Inference running third in the Victoria Derby — is also backing Bondi. And so is Elmer Funke Kupper, the former ASX boss and horse fanatic. Funke Kupper also likes Wicklow Brave.

Robbie Cooke, for what will likely be his last Cup as the boss of Tatts, tips Jameka and Grey Lion, while his offsider at Tabcorp David Attenborough is tipping Qewy and Tabcorp chair Paula Dwyer is tipping Assign.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield likes Almoonqith (put your house on it), and former Liberal federal director Brian Loughnane says Wicklow Brave (with Who Shot Thebarman an outside tip),

And Qantas boss Alan Joyce — who along with Rinehart will bring a bit of razzle dazzle to the Emirates marquee today — likes Heartbreak City. It’s owned by three Irish fellas, in a syndicate called “Here For The Craic”. A perfect match.

Keep your head down

Crown chief executive and
avid punter Rowen Craigie normally holds court throughout the Melbourne Cup carnival, but, understandably, he has been keeping a lower profile this year.

The Crown marquee past the winning post at Flemington has always been far more tame territory than the hoopla of the Birdcage. Never more so than on Derby Day.

The arrests and ongoing detention of 18 employees in China have cast a pall over the festival of gambling.

Still, yesterday evening Craigie attended a private event at the Waiting Room in Crown Towers, which was held by legendary trainer Chris Waller (who has Who Shot Thebarman and Grand Marshal racing in the Cup).

Good to see Craigie on-site. Here’s hoping he’s trackside today to lend a bit of Crown executive weight to the proceedings.

Don’t mention NAB

ANZ boss Shayne Elliott was is fighting form in Hong Kong yesterday, when it was suggested on a teleconference that his bank’s retreat from Asia was like NAB’s pull back from Britain.

“I almost take offence that I’m trying to mirror NAB,” said a testy Elliott.

Just goes to show: there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since the two Melbourne-based “stumps” flirted with merging in 2008 back in the Mike Smith-era.

KFC girl done good

Frail aged-care provider Estia Health yesterday revealed it had permanently hired interim boss Norah Barlow.

She previously ran the listed retirement group Summerset in her native New Zealand where she famously described herself as the “girl from KFC” — after her days working part-time at the chicken shop when she studied at Wellington’s Victoria University. The rise of the Colonel Sanders lieutenant continues.

Dodgy dinner

An apology over an outbreak of food poisoning always puts a dampener on an email
big-noting the success of a conference.

So it was in the missive by National Farmers’ Federation boss Tony Mahar yesterday, sent to thank attendees for their participation at the agriculture lobby’s national conference.

“It was undoubtedly the most successful congress that the NFF has held,” wrote Mahar of the two-day event, held last Wednesday and Thursday in Canberra.

Then things turned, like an upset stomach.

“Unfortunately, on another note, I have recently been advised that a small number of people experienced illness towards the end of the congress and the following day,” wrote Mahar.

He said the catering disaster appeared to be “related to the food provided on the second day”. The ACT Department of Health is on the case.

It could have been much worse. Had it struck on day one of the conference — which, ironically, was celebrating Australian food expertise — it might have felled keynote speaker Andrew Forrest or the deputy PM Barnaby Joyce. Small mercies.