CEO O’Brien to miss Woolworths shindig

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Fund managers will have to live without the wisdom of outgoing Woolworths boss Grant O’Brien when the struggling retailer mounts a roadshow next month after the half-year results.

Instead, chairman Gordon Cairns, who’s making the trek to Woolworths’ HQ in the far outer Sydney suburb of Bella Vista three times a week, and CFO David Marr will be operating the Powerpoint projector.

A pity, as no doubt investors would love to hear from the man behind both Woolies’ ill-fated Masters hardware push, Project Oxygen, and its shutdown, which should be (but isn’t) called Project Carbon Monoxide.

Talk is that supermarkets boss Brad Banducci is basically running the show, but the company assures us O’Brien is still CEO.

Does this mean O’Brien won’t present the results either?

No matter his duties, every day on the job adds to the pot he’ll cash in when in July he turns 55, becomes eligible for a lucrative defined benefits pension, and is a free man.

Parting shots

When UBS wealth management spin-off Crestone finally (hopefully) throws open its doors in April, it will be almost a year since former boss Mike Chisholm pulled the plug on the Swiss in favour of independence.

Chisholm and crew have so far poured in $16.5 million to pay Matthew Grounds’ UBS for the privilege of taking the problem child off his hands, but that doesn’t seem to have brought much loyalty from Crestone’s parental “strategic partner”.

The deal that UBS did last month with the now fully NAB-controlled JB Were for the sale of UBS research to the broker seems to have ruffled feathers at Crestone, which had done a previous deal to access research for its clients from UBS too.

But Chisholm and those advisers who’ve made it across are pressing on regardless, asking former UBS clients to close their UBS accounts and open new CBA ones.

Crestone struck a recent deal with Ian Narev’s profit powerhouse for transactional banking and forex execution.

Sick joke

Investment banks might think twice about pitching for Malcolm Turnbull’s potential privatisation of the Medicare payments system if past mooted sell-offs are any guide.

With Mathias Cormann in the finance chair, the Libs have floated various options for flogging off public assets to help balance the budget, with lots of hot air and private sector leg work, but little success.

Scoping studies for the sales of Defence Housing Australia, The Australian Mint and Australian Hearing went nowhere, there’s the on-again off-again Australian Rail Track Corporation sell-off, while the sale of the ASIC registries business being run by Roger Feletto at Greenhill is unfolding at a glacial pace.

Indicative bids are due to the bankers (who are getting $4.7 million for the gig) in less than two weeks, with Cormann telling Senate Estimates on Tuesday that a winning bid would be about more than price.

Not surprising given info docos for the sale show the business, which requires massive capex to upgrade antiquated IT, told bidders the business didn’t actually make any money.

Market scuttlebutt is circulating that royalties due to the states for use of their data may further dull the attractiveness of the operation, although there may be no substance there.

The Lotus position

Who can find Lotus Securities, the company whose financial services licence Darren Herft’s AMMA Private Equity relies on to raise the millions poured into investments such as streaming music service Guvera?

Lotus isn’t at level 1, 75 Crockford St, Port Melbourne, which it’s told ASIC is its registered office and principal place of business.

“There’s no-one there,” said Craig Joel, whose Joelcorp owns the building and has its office on the ground floor.

Father Bob Maguire’s charity Open Family Australia used to be upstairs, but it moved out after a 2011 merger with AFL hero Glenn Manton’s White Lion and the space was sublet.

Joel said upstairs had been empty since “October or November” last year.

As reported yesterday, Lotus’s phones are disconnected.

How Lotus supervises its authorised rep AMMA, which boasts of tipping $145m into the loss-making Guvera, without an office or a phone isn’t clear.

The lotus is the fruit of forgetfulness, so perhaps it’s an oversight. Greg Medcraft’s ASIC might want to find out.

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