Billionaires in a spin over new choppers

Cartoon: Peter Nicholson.

Trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox has a new toy. So does millionaire horseman and property developer Lloyd Williams, with both taking delivery of brand new $8 million-plus helicopters.

What better way to beat Melbourne traffic?

Fox got the jump on Williams to get the first Italian-made Augusta Westland AW169 off the production line, with his chopper bearing the rego VH-FOX … what else?

Williams’ machine came out of the factory eight choppers later and now the pair are sharing the skies in a brand of luxury former speaker Bronwyn Bishop can only dream of.

Williams’ HudCon Properties owns his new mode of transport, which has a twin-engine and has a lower key VH-LSN rego.

Choppers, it seems are flavour of the month. Even James Packer’s Crown Resorts is getting in on the act, albeit taking a more economic approach as the billionaire seeks to preserve cash for his potential privatisation of the casino company and his wedding to Mariah Carey.

Rather than buy one of its own, Crown has wrapped a Eurocopter owned by Melbourne’s MicroFlite in its branding, but still billing the helicopter as its own “new Crown Resorts chopper”.

Taxing times

Eastern suburbs richie Garrick Hawkins has good friends.

Taxman Chris Jordan’s Federal Court case against Hawkins over a $33 million tax bill reveals the involvement of one of the west’s most colourful corporate characters in Hawkins’ settlement with former West Australian treasurer Eric Ripper over a car leasing deal.

Enter high-flying fraudulent Perth lawyer Rohan Skea, who was a Clayton Utz partner alongside Foreign Minister Julie Bishop back in the day, before spinning off to a new firm and becoming the lawyer of choice for the Court state government.

The ATO says Skea, who has spent time in prison for defrauding finance companies, held in his trust account money that allegedly ended up with a Cayman Islands company controlled by Hawkins that bore a name similar to a US group involved in the leasing deal.

Hawkins was also grilled over Skea in a 2012 Federal Court hearing over the collapse of the leasing company, Matrix Group.

It was put to Hawkins he’d paid money to Skea to influence the lawyer’s advice to the WA government. “Absolutely denied,” Hawkins responded.

First past the post

Westpac boss Brian Hartzer says he wants his bank to be the first major company in Oz to achieve a 50-50 gender balance in its leadership team.

A noble pursuit by the American boss, publicly articulated on International Women’s Day, with an ambition to reach the target by 2017, from 46 per cent now.

Trouble is, Telstra’s chief Andy Penn reckons he’s already beaten Hartzer past the milestone, with half the telco giant’s executive team female.

Penn has been in the top Telstra job less than a year, but reshuffles now see four out of eight of his direct reports women — head of operations Kate McKenzie, media and marketing boss Joe Pollard, former Barclays chief Cynthia Whelan and HR boss Katherine Paroz.

Maybe Hartzer can go for second.

Life sentence

APRA’s Wayne Byres will be keeping a close eye on Greg Medcraft’s probe into the life insurance industry, which is expected to centre on Ian Narev’s CBA.

Back in September the prudential regulator set up a strike team to crack down on the governance issues plaguing the financial services sector, saying there was “more to do” in the area.

Medcraft and Byres will also be monitoring CBA’s conduct towards former CommInsure chief medical officer-turned-whistleblower Benjamin Koh, in particular their mindfulness of the strict whistleblower rules outlined in the Life Insurance Act.

The highly-educated and credentialed Koh, who’s also a volunteer lifesaver at Bondi, was told by CBA’s top lawyer David Cohen last week that he had been sacked for sending company documents to his personal email address — not for blowing the whistle. Just as well, because victimising a whistleblower is a crime punishable by six months in jail.

Now that the good doctor has sued the Narev’s bank for breach of contract we can expect all to be revealed in Victoria’s County Court.

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