Cash’s no longer king, so Comyn seeks out the alpha Fox; AFL defamation case coast to coast

Linfox executive chairman Peter Fox.

It’s been a ruthless game of hardball between the banks and the billionaire Fox family, with both sides at each other for nigh on six months over the future of cash-in-transit firm Armaguard, which company executives say is on the verge of going bust.

Linfox acquired Armaguard in 2003 and that was just fine, for a while, but paywave and the pandemic did no favours for the future of cash; apart from the elderly, few people carry it in their pocket any more and the drop in volume has made armoured trucking a rather unprofitable enterprise.

Not just unprofitable, but loss-making. The Fox family has even taken to pouring millions of dollars into Armaguard just to keep it running during these times of distress. Meanwhile, its leaders have run a blade through the business, cutting staff, axing depots, figuring out ways to conserve a bit of coin.

Linfox patriarch Lindsay Fox. Picture: Valeriu Campan

It’s why Linfox has been putting the hard word on Armaguard’s customers – the banks – to pay more for the service. A deal is quite close, we’re told, but it’s been a journey getting to this point. The Linfox leadership even agreed to a forensic audit of its accounts, if only to convince everyone that they weren’t lying about their wailings of insolvency.

Expectedly, Peter Fox, executive chairman, has been a figurehead in the negotiations alongside board director and former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty and CFO Michael Pickard. Battling on the other side of the table has been Australian Banking Association CEO Anna Bligh and her chair Ross McEwan, acting on behalf of the big four, ­McEwan also being the outgoing chief executive of NAB.

No one involved would dispute that these conversations have been blunt, maybe even heated.

Commonwealth Bank chief Matt Comyn.

But Margin Call has heard of an impasse that saw Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn, who sits on the ABA’s council, to go over Peter’s head and seek a face-to-face meeting with his father, Lindsay Fox, such was his frustration with Peter.

Asked if that meeting was sought to correct the progress of the negotiations, a CBA spokesman said: “We can confirm that Matt has met with Mr Fox. The discussion though will have to remain private.” Make of that what you will.

We did hear details of the meeting elsewhere, including that Fox the Elder ultimately shrugged off the problem and told Comyn that whatever had become of this Armaguard palaver was best left with Peter to figure out. After all, he’s the executive chairman.

And besides, these days Lindsay is taken up with more pressing matters … like figuring out what delights and surprises to bestow upon guests at his next birthday party! His 87th birthday is only a few weeks away.

Legal to and fro

A desperate bid from Glen Bartlett, former president of AFL club Melbourne, who’s fighting so very hard to have a defamation action against his old club heard in the wilds of Perth and not Victoria, where it’s claimed his reputation was shredded.

Deciding on this jurisdictional quirk is Federal Court judge Craig Colvin. He took arguments on Tuesday and reserved his decision, so we’ll see where he lands. Most of the characters involved in this saga, as well as the witnesses, live in Melbourne, but Bartlett is jonesing for the west – and we think we might know why.

Anyone just catching up on this need only be apprised of the most salient points, namely that Bartlett quit as Demons president in April 2021 and alleges that several board members defamed him in published and unpublished remarks once he’d gone.

A lawyer himself, Bartlett filed his defamation claim last year in the WA Supreme Court but Justice Marcus Solomon, hearing arguments from the club, kicked the case back to Victoria because, well, everyone involved lives there.

Former Melbourne Demons president Glen Bartlett. Picture: AFL Media

Bartlett’s team then tried to stay that decision, which Solomon refused. Not to be deterred, they then tried to stay the decision to refuse the stay, and that also went bust. So, now they’re filing for the case to be transferred out of the Supreme Court altogether and into the Federal Court, which is what Colvin is considering. This, argued barrister Sandip Mukerjea, appearing for the club, constitutes an abuse of process.

What’s Bartlett’s play? Well, lawyers know something the rest of us don’t, which is that anyone suing for defamation generally wants their case to be heard in WA because it’s so plaintiff-friendly. It’s not even a joke to call it the wild west; cases aren’t subject to uniform defamation law and there’s no serious harm requirement. The rules are much looser; it’s tennis without the net.

Bartlett is merely arguing that he can’t receive a fair trial in Victoria, and also that he has a national reputation to protect, the Federal Court therefore being the most appropriate forum to run the case. Maybe so.

Colvin has the option of accepting the transfer and keeping the matter in WA, but he could also accept the case and shunt it to the Federal Court’s Victorian registry, saving everyone on the air miles. A third option is to kick it back to the Victorian Supreme Court.

There’s a lot riding on the decision. It’s almost as exciting as figuring out where the AFL grand final will be played.