Casualties mount at Woolworths’ Bella Vista HQ

Illustration: Rod Clement.

The body bags are piling up in the Bella Vista aisles as the new, streamlined world order at Brad Banducci’sWoolworths continues to take shape.

Group corporate counsel Rod Bordignon — who for a time was company secretary before Richard Dammery joined from Minters as chief general counsel — is out the door.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci. Picture: Brett Costello.

He’s the latest casualty in Banducci’s overhaul.

At least one other lawyer has also left, all while Dammery appears to be expanding his internal power base — taking over several reporting lines that previously went straight to “retired” chief executive Grant O’Brien, Banducci’s underwhelming predecessor.

New PR boss Jennifer James — when she arrives from PepsiCo at the start of October — will answer to Dammery, who incidentally was also in charge of the recruitment process that hired her.

That change in reporting lines — from the boss to Dammery — scared off a range of high-flying candidates in the search conducted by head hunter Jason Johnson.

As it happens, Johnson was the recruiter who placed Dammery at Woolies in 2014.

Power outage

Melbourne’s corporate Tower of Power, 101 Collins Street, was a fitting location for Shayne ­Elliott’s ANZ to agree to its humbling in-principle settlement with glamour Indian might-be billionaires Pankaj and Radhika Oswal.

Flagstaff Partners chief executive Tony Burgess, in his Melbourne office.

The prestigious 101 is the home of ANZ’s external lawyers on the case, Herbert Smith Freehills. Freehills partner Ken Adams represented ANZ (aka Goliath) in the boardroom negotiations, while Watson Mangioni partner John Biggs led the negotiations for the Oswals (aka David).

Infamously, it was in the same Freehills offices in 101 that ANZ’s former chief risk officer, Chris Page,allegedly “shanghaied’’ poor Pankaj, in a vigorous attempt to get him to sign mortgage papers.

As it happens, 101 is also the corporate office of former ANZ chair Charles Goode’s corporate advisory firm, Flagstaff Partners. Indeed, the boutique’s CEO Tony Burgesswas to be grilled over his advice to ANZ on the sale of the Oswals’ former ­fertiliser empire. Looks like he’s off the hook.

Collateral damage

Yes, it seems ANZ’s head of legal Bob Santamaria and his team of 132 (no exaggeration) will soon move on from the Oswals to the bank’s next courtroom showdown.

Radhika and Pankaj Oswal. Picture: David Geraghty/The Australian.

The rival parties have until Monday to sort out the paperwork, otherwise Shayne Elliott’s ANZ will be back in the Victorian Supreme Court, and the appalling media coverage — of alleged racism and headlocks and orphan children — will probably continue.

Not that the Oswals have been unscathed.

The couple can’t leave Australia until they pay their tax bill to Chris Jordan’s ATO (believed to be towards $100 million).

And they have even had the state of their marriage dragged through the court.

Earlier this week, before breaking for settlement discussions, Radhika was asked by her lawyers about an email exchange that documented an intriguing lover’s tiff between the couple. It is believed that Team ANZ had a copy of the exchange, and were to make much of it under cross-examination.

Radhika’s lawyer asked what the drama was all about.

“I was very annoyed at (Pankaj),” she said. “He called me certain names and I didn’t appreciate that, so I just wanted to get back at him.”

And the argument’s essence?

“His father had said something derogatory to my father and it had become an issue,” she said.

She felt Pankaj had not defended her noble family’s honour.

“And then he said, ‘You’re just after the money, too’. You know, those kinds of things. And I said, ‘I’m not here for the money, I’m your wife. Don’t talk to me like that. And you can keep your bloody money if that’s what you think’,” she recalled.

All of which sounds like the tip of a more colourful backstory.

But, with the settlement almost agreed on, it’s unlikely to be further explored — unless we can secure funding to produce “Oswals: The Musical!”

Demolition derby

Meanwhile across the Nullarbor in the salubrious Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove, bulldozers are being revved up ahead of the demolition of the Oswals’ long-abandoned mansion “Taj on Swan”.

The Oswals’ long-abandoned mansion in Peppermint Grove.

Head of the local council John Merrick will on Tuesday recommend that his councillors accept a six-figure tender to push over the Oswals’ derelict structure — which was to be a $70m palace, until the ANZ got in the way of the Indian glamour couple’s Burrup fertiliser empire, allegedly putting Pankaj in a headlock, threatening Radhika’s children with a future as orphans and seizing their Australian assets — all of which gets in the way of a big DIY job.

The Oswals have until the end of next month to do the demo job themselves, but if they don’t, Peppermint Grove Council will let the contract itself.

The proposal for the job estimates it could take up to 22 weeks to complete and involve the removal of 80,000 tonnes of debris. That’s a lot of concrete — and all before you get to those subterranean Four’N Twenty meat pies.

Block party

Nine boss Hugh Marks and his posse of execs put on a show of strength on Wednesday night in Port Melbourne to launch their great hope for the post-Olympics ratings season, The Block.

The under siege Nine crew: (from left to right) Scott Cam, Michael Healy, Andrew Backwell, Julian Cress, Tim Cleary, Hugh Marks, Shelley Craft and Adrian Swift.

Despite mounting pressure on Marks and his team from billionaire Nine shareholder Bruce Gordon, it was all smiles as Nine thrust open the doors of the show’s latest property development in Port Melbourne, for which Marks paid $5m earlier this year. On the newly renovated rooftop of the previously Harry Stamoulis-owned building, Marks was flanked by Nine’s longstanding director of TV Michael Healy, and his visiting content execs Andrew Backwell and Adrian Swift.

Proceedings kicked on well into the evening, with festivities evolving into a nearby warehouse in South Melbourne that the show has been using as host Scott Cam’s HQ for the shoot.

Miller makes impact

It’s an investment banker’s dream: an advisory gig on the way in and then on the way out.

Impact Generation Partners co-founder Quentin Miller.

So it was for former UBS managing director Quentin Miller who has just clipped the ticket on the sale of Kettle Chips, CC’s and Samboy chip maker Snack Brands Australia for a second time.

Before he left UBS last year to start his own boutique shop, Miller in 2008 advised a consortium of “bogans from the burbs” investors led by Snack Brands boss Paul Musgrave on their purchase of the chip maker.

Miller’s clients paid a fraction of the price that biscuit maker Arnott’s forked out for the company six years earlier.

Fast forward eight years and Miller has again advised the low-profile but now multi-millionaires on their sale of Snack Brands to The Philippines’ Universal Robina for $600m. This time around Miller is working under his Intrinsic Partners shingle. He has also established another social impact advisory business known as Impact Generation Partners with former Myer Family Company executive Amanda Miller (also his wife).

The couple work out of South Yarra’s Como office tower, home to a bunch of big family offices including Raphael Geminder’s Kin Group and the Peter Edwards-led Victor Smorgon Group, as well as television network Ten.

Impact’s first headline deal was advising a host of wealthy individuals and family offices backing a brother and sister-led company, HireUp, which is bankrolled by NAB.

The company helps disabled Australians choose their own support workers and manage their care online.

But it’s Miller’s advice to Snack Brands on the Universal deal — which he worked on for more than six months — that puts Intrinsic on the big stage.