Big Jim’s in the driving seat

Cartoon: Rod Clement

High-profile debt collector Jim Byrnes is scootering into the disruptive digital era. He’s emerged as having a mystery 11th hour advisory role amid the collapse of the two-wheeled taxi start-up, Scooti.

Byrnes is a blast from the past, the self-dubbed corporate streetfighter, whose reputation dates from the early 1990s Bond Corporation implosion.

Often spotted idly driving around Double Bay with his hair in a man bun, with the top down in his vintage 1970s Eldorado Cadillac, Byrnes has started 2020 busy in the world of disrupter closures.

Big Jim got Deloitte’s David Mansfield and Neil Cussen on a teleconference call last month, along with Scooti’s chief executive Brett Balsters, to seek out the future of the scooter rideshare app. A week later Deloitte were appointed voluntary administrators of the business that started in inner-Melbourne last March and then expanded into Sydney, although just south of the bridge.

Having got the referral for the administration from Byrnes, Deloitte affirmed in ASIC lodgings that there was no relationship with Byrnes, which “in their view, would restrict us from properly exercising our judgment and duties in relation to the appointment”.

“We are not paid any commissions, inducements or benefits by James Byrnes to undertake any appointments,” it advised.

A licence agreement has been quickly entered into with an investor to allow the business to continue to trade.

Byrnes, whose high point was as Alan Bond’s bankruptcy adviser, advised 2007 court proceedings he suffered attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Divorce Day

Lawyers love the post-Christmas period known by many as “Divorce Day”.

When a family law firm’s doors reopen in the new year, there is usually an increase among the miserably married seeking to know their rights upon separation.

Two high-profile separations in 2020 highlight the spike in separations as the holidays come to an end.

Last week, The Australian revealed that Michael Clarke, the former Australian cricket captain, and his wife of eight years Kyly, had quietly separated.

The other big separation emerged after a drink-driving incident on Australia Day morning when fitness guru Michelle Bridges described her stress associated with the estrangement from Steve “Commando” Willis.

Bridges pleaded guilty at Waverley Court on Tuesday. She was fined $750, disqualified from driving for three months and was handed down an additional 12-month period in which she will have to have an interlock breathalyser fitted to any car she drives.

Their Potts Point abode has quickly sold off market. No formal settlement paperwork yet, but Margin Call gleans it sold to a couple renting just down the street in the village of downsizers.

The mystery buyers of the $6.4m Pomeroy apartment are set to emerge as Prue and Simon Perrott. Simon has a wealth of experience from 30 years in investment banking, including stints at ABM Amro, Royal Bank of Scotland and CIMB Bank Australia. He is still a non-executive director of Lendlease Real Estate Investments.

After he retired from investment banking in 2014 he joined the board of the local Kings Cross charity Wayside Chapel to assist in making a positive impact in the community.

The couple briefly rented in the Pomeroy complex after selling in Mosman for $7.85m to a local estate agent.

ANZ targets super rich

His departure from HSBC last July shocked the nation’s wealthy and the industry that serves them.

But given the coronavirus and the problems that have engulfed his former employer since, Hayden Matthews might now consider it a blessing in disguise to have been let go by his offshore masters. Now we hear Matthews — whose clients notably include Gina Rinehart — has surfaced at Shayne Elliott’s ANZ headquarters in Docklands to build out a specialised family office business for the mega-wealthy.

The focus, we are told, will be clients worth at least $250m in an initiative that apparently has the imprimatur of Elliott himself and his board.

Matthews is said to have the budget to bring the full suite of private banking to ANZ’s wealthy.

The big four banks have been offloading their retail financial advice businesses amid the horrors of the Hayne royal commission. And the big offshore banks, with the exception of Credit Suisse, have had a tough time making inroads into the Australian ultra-wealthy private banking market.

Instead, boutique firms such as Crestone, Escala, Coda and Evans & Partners have been snapping up business.

ANZ retains an “Established Wealth” private bank that focuses on old money but with Matthews’ appointment it wants to compete globally with international rivals targeting big family office clients.

BHP art attack

Ahead of the release of his maiden results on Tuesday as boss of BHP, Mike Henry has been implementing reforms at the mining giant’s Collins Street headquarters. It seems Henry, who took over from Andrew Mackenzie on January 1, is no fan of modern art.

With Mackenzie still floating about head office, Henry has set about transforming the vibe on level 18 of the mega group’s Melbourne base by removing pretty much all of the modern art.

The Canadian-born 53-year-old has sent the works into the bowels of the building and the wider BHP collection, in favour of replacing the pieces with all sorts of shots featuring BHP’s myriad operations.

Sexy stuff.

Level 18 of the high-rise complex comprises mostly meeting rooms, with execs like Henry housed in offices on the floor below.

Mackenzie, meantime, has returned from some time off over summer during which he visited the UK. He is set to officially finish up on March 31.

His formal farewell was held last week at a warehouse in the backstreets of Richmond, not far from his own warehouse abode bought in 2013 for $3.41m.

Chilton Hilton

Details are emerging on Sydney’s record upper north shore residential house sale. The Warrawee grand manor, dubbed the Chilton Hilton, sold last Friday for over $15m. It was bought by the little known Han Xue from Jilliby, located in the Dooralong Valley of the

The Chilton Hilton

Central Coast region, according to the Mack Lions Lawyers caveat.

Last traded for $11m just 18 months ago, it was sold by Wilson Xue, the Chinese shoe king who undertook a luxury upgrade.

Its prior owner was Xia Kong, the former wife of the reputed Northern Territory billionaire turned bankrupt mining mogul Jerry Ren.