Brian Hartzer’s legal notes not so brief

You know you are in for a long day at the office when the briefing notes left on your desk from your team of 100 lawyers are taller than your kid.

This was the edifice of papers, folders and documents that awaited former Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer in his office one day as he prepared to give evidence before the banking royal commission.

In a frank, revealing and in many times humorous interview on a stockmarket podcast called Equity Mates, ex-boss Hartzer admitted he and other Westpac executives due to give evidence before the royal commission’s top inquisitors, Rowena Orr and Michael Hodge, entered a type of “boot camp” to get them combat-ready for their appearances.

“You have no idea what you are going to be asked and you have got these guys whose professional job is to tear you apart. And I was one of those.”

Hartzer said he spent as many as three days a week for six weeks preparing, telling the ­Equity Mates podcast: “I genuinely have not worked harder since university than the preparation I did for my royal commission thing.

“It was seriously intense.”

Illustration: Rod Clement

Hartzer’s own prep work involved thumbing his way through a pile of documents nicely prepared by the almost 100 lawyers Westpac had to ­employ just to cope with the ­demands, requests and appearances triggered by the royal commission.

“I came into my office one day and they brought in my briefing books and the briefing books were arrayed on the table and I put them on the floor and I made a pile, and the pile was 4½ to 5 feet of reading material I had to go through.”

Perhaps lawyers should start charging by the feet rather than by the hour. For many of the nation’s top-tier law firms, this could see their client billings the only man-made structure observable from space, other than the Great Wall of China and the Bunnings superstore in Vermont South in Melbourne.

Meanwhile, the Westpac boot camp probably paid off, with Hartzer’s seen as one of the better performances before the royal commission – as opposed to former National Australia Bank chairman Ken Henry, who reportedly refused any coaching before his disastrous show at the commission that was seen by some as a mix of disdain and ­arrogance.

Hartzer used a wonderful Test cricket analogy to describe his own evidence before the commission, comparing himself as the batsman and saying that there were no sixes, no fours, just the chance you would be stumped and the odd “bouncer at your head”.

Hartzer also spoke to some of the frustration from inside Westpac as it was deluged with demands for documents stretching back decades, which probably only fuelled the demand for even more lawyers.

“The requests were just coming in non-stop,” Hartzer told the podcast. “The regulator or royal commission hits you with these document requests, and gives you no time, so please give us a copy of every file of every customer for the last 18 years who have had this product. How do you even do that?”

Hartzer has a way with words and, when asked about the bitcoin craze, gave the best four-word answer possible.

“It’s digital tulips, man.”

To which most Millennials would probably respond with two words: “OK boomer.”

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Great work debate

The future of work is a buzzword, and NAB boss Ross McEwan has made it clear what he thinks about the latest working-from-home trend.

“I want our people back in the office to support the city and help get things moving,” McEwan said in March.

But Margin Call can reveal that not everyone at the Melbourne-headquartered bank is warming to the boss’s position.

It could be that McEwan is tough. After, all he recently resumed closing branches in the bush, with Cobden – the hometown of his top PR operative Mark Alexander – on top of the list. Not even the fact that Alexander’s mum still banked there was enough to save the branch.

But unlike Alexander, who had to put a positive spin on closing branches in the bush, NBA’s executive for retail, regional NSW and the ACT, Tony Story wasn’t afraid to oppose the call back to NAB’s Bourke St bunker.

“Politicians might want this outcome to help bring in tolls and taxes, but most workplaces (including NAB) have discovered their employees are happier and more efficient working in a hybrid way,” Story wrote on LinkedIn, seemingly forgetting his boss’s very public comments.

“The competitive advantage for acquiring good talent sits with companies that embrace holistic future ways of working. PS there is nothing ‘revitalising’ about commuting 1hr+ each way, five days a week, just to sit behind the same computer you could have worked on from home.”

NAB CEO Ross McEwan. Picture: Aaron Francis

Contradicting the boss could be seen as an innocent slip, but Story is more savvy that, having previously been former NSW premier and NAB exec Mike Baird’s head of digital media.

Still, we have to praise a workplace that encourages employees to speak their minds – there are too many corporate clones. And Story doesn’t disappoint on that score.

In another LinkedIn post, he urged people outside banking to apply for a role at NAB.

“I’m sick of fishing in the same pond of people jumping from bank to bank,” he wrote. “Are you a barista who knows how to work under pressure with a smile? Please apply.”

Perhaps that’s a better way of supporting CBD cafe workers, who have found themselves without a job amid Covid-19 lockdowns.

Thorburn’s impact

Whether a way to make up for his corporate misgivings or just a measure of the altruistic guy who was there all along, former NAB chief Andrew Thorburn is certainly putting his stamp on the local impact-investing community.

Known for his departure after the bruising banking royal commission, Thorburn now projects a very different type of corporate image – his latest post a part-time executive gig with the Liberman-backed Impact Investment Group.

Chairman Danny Almagor, husband of Berry Liberman, called Thorburn in for the role as part of an executive shake-up at the renewables and green real estate-focused firm, after the departure of its chief Daniel Madhavan. In happier days the three men were quite the trio – Thorburn taking to social media in the months after his exit from the bank to describe his initial impressions of the impact industry during a trip to San Francisco.

“Danny was our host, along with Dan Madhavan of IIG … and it was fun being with an Australian group who were intent on learning more about this growing investment field,” he wrote in November 2019.

Thorburn has made quite the impression on the industry ever since – also branching out with former Bain consultant Chris Yoo for his venture For Purpose Partners.

It’s no walk in the park at IIG. The group has had a rough trot in past months, as one of many creditors of Daniel Grollo’s now collapsed Grocon. Grollo had been a partner of IIG’s Northumberland development, now replaced by Probuild, but the debacle is estimated to have put the project back by a year.

That setback and its other major projects, like that of Kensington’s Younghusband wool store revamp, will no doubt be key factors for Thorburn, who’s been tasked alongside Luke Sayers’ eponymous consultancy to “work through our emerging opportunities and define IIG’s exciting next steps”.

No small task, by the sounds.