Well, it’s been a week of utter embarrassment for billionaire racehorse owner Jonathan Munz, who’s been put back on his heels after an attempt at some boardroom anarchy and a failed coup at Racing Victoria.
Can we even call it a coup? Munz was intending to slice and dice five RV directors in this putsch but hadn’t even bothered to submit a rival ticket to fill the prospective vacancies. Not to worry. In the end it all fell apart like a ruined dessert owing to the lack of support.
Munz is the chairman of the Thoroughbred Racehorse Owners’ Association and on the strength of that alone he commanded enough numbers to call a special general meeting of the RV board on Wednesday. And that’s about where this flexing of his muscle came to its bitter end.
The target of this misguided venture was RV’s somewhat maligned chief executive, Andrew Jones, who’s been facing mischief and threats of mutiny for months, but in the gun with Jones was chairman Mike Hurst, Kate Joel, Paul Guerra, Tim Eddy and Ross Lanyon.
Success would have created a very amusing problem for Victorian Racing Minister Anthony Carbines; it would have forced him to find five replacements for the empty seats at extremely short notice – gigs that few people would want at this point.
Enter the AFL’s former CEO Gillon McLachlan. Carbines has been promising the golden-haired boy the role of RV chairman for months, but at least now we know exactly why he’s been quietly looking elsewhere for a gig in private equity. Seriously, who would go anywhere near this room full of putzes?
For the record, Munz lost the vote with 17 against, three in favour and 15 abstentions, with the big question now, of course, being who switched sides at the last minute?
No Mensa membership required to point our chin at Victoria Racing Club chairman Neil Wilson – he’s been agitating for change with Munz. Funny, too, because his very own VRC is $10m in the hole to Racing Victoria, plus another $63m to ANZ. Moonee Valley Racing Club was another to drop its backing of Munz, with Melbourne Racing Club also abstaining.
And the motivation for their change of heart?
Margin Call is faithfully informed that there may have been a phone call from Carbines and others in the Victorian government to these chaps with a gentle reminder that, ah, these shenanigans could jeopardise their funding.
Not so capital move
Talk about leaving it late. The nation’s largest publicly listed cashbox, Excelsior Capital, finally released its financial results on the last big day of reporting season.
Excelsior shareholders were obviously hoping that the company’s boss and biggest shareholder, Leanne Catelan, would free up a few doubloons from the estimated $120m in cash she and her three-person board are sitting on, if only to pay out a much-awaited dividend, or at least a mammoth capital return. Sadly, their hopes were dashed.
Close of trade had come and gone by the time Excelsior released its half-year numbers, and you best believe everyone was staring at their screens completely perplexed by the rudeness confronting them.
Firstly, no explanation as to what took so long to release the numbers. After all, it’s a cashbox; it’s not a multi-continental enterprise domiciled in Guernsey or the Isle of Man. Second issue is the pathetic dividend offered up from the company’s incredible cash holdings.
One explanation for that is Catelan herself. She’s the owner of 51.33 per cent of the company and the daughter of RP Data founder Ray Catelan.
What do we know about him? Well, he enjoyed life. He once bought the sprawling luxury yacht of late stockbroker Rene Rivkin, who didn’t end up needing a boat all that much because he was doing a bit for fraud at the time.
Catelan’s not exactly sitting on the bones of her butt, either. She recently sold her Potts Point mansion “Bomera” to steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta for $34m. She runs Excelsior as a type of listed investment company.
It’s got $91.7m from the sale of its cables business, CMI, another $8.9m on the way, and an investment portfolio worth $23m, of which about $17.8m is in cash.
So, yeah, of course shareholders were sitting around waiting for a monster dividend, or even a Catelan takeover, which would have pleased former banker Peter Murray, the second-biggest shareholder; his twin-listed Imperial Pacific and London City Equities own 12 per cent of Excelsior.
Damn them all, clearly. Excelsior declared a paltry dividend of 3.5c a share, about enough for investors to pool together their coins, buy a stamp and send a letter of complaint to Catelan. The company’s latest NTA statement showed it was worth $4.20 a share, of which about 90 per cent is cash.
Return of the hawk
And lastly, who could forget former Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami, the quirky China hawk who made a name for himself in Canberra with his unusually forthright takes.
Beloved by conservative leaders, Yamagami ended up being so outspoken that he ended his three-year tenure in a froideur with the Albanese government.
That’s how it looked anyway, with almost no one from Labor turning up to see him off in the end, unlike the Liberals, who formed an orderly queue to pay tribute and pose for photographs, among them Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott, Marise Payne, Simon Birmingham, and even former Liberal Party director Brian Loughnane. Yamagami also received a very special Seiko watch as a parting gift.
“Three PMs’ tribute to Japan’s greatest envoy,” was the inscription, signed by Abbott, Morrison and the most revered of them all, John Howard.
But now it looks like Yamagami-san is back in from the cold – sort of. He’s accepted a job as a senior adviser with Hemisphere East, an advisory firm with its head in the centre of the swarming Venn diagram that takes in cyber and tech and Aukus and the Indo-Pacific. It’s run by former Australian Federal Police officer Cameron Watts and director Paul Maley, a former national security correspondent at this masthead. Former MP-turned-senator and ex-Australian ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma briefly sat on the advisory board but withdrew after he was returned to federal parliament.
“I sincerely welcome the opportunity to work with Hemisphere East,” Yamagami said.
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