Chris Kelaher times his return perfectly

Ex-IOOF boss Chris Kelaher. Picture: David Geraghty

Here’s a name we haven’t heard for a while: Chris Kelaher, former managing director of wealth giant IOOF and a storied corporate figure whose reputation was touched up just slightly during Kenneth Hayne’s banking royal commission.

No one’s heard much out of Kelaher since 2019 when he departed IOOF — now dubbed Insignia Financial — aside from a middling pursuit of him in the Federal Court that year by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, their case having been thoroughly dismissed by Justice Jayne Jagot.

IOOF became Insignia Financial, now the subject of a takeover battle. Picture: Hollie Adams

Nothing since … and then! Around lunchtime on Monday he walks out of the corporate wilderness into the Melbourne offices of Sequoia Financial Services, where he’s introduced to staff as a “consultant” and holds a meeting with CFO Lizzie Tan.

Sequoia’s CEO Garry Crole confirmed Kelaher had been brought in to review the business and even called him a “highly experienced industry executive”, which is generous considering what we feel is a fox-and-henhouse parallel too obvious to ignore here. Work backwards with us, for a moment, while we make that case.

First, Sequoia. In early February an 18 per cent chunk of the firm was gobbled up in a raid by Australian Wealth Advisors Group, or WAG, as they’re coded on the ASX.

WAG chair Lee Iafrate is very chummy with Kelaher. So is WAG director Mark Stephen, who reported to Kelaher for almost 10 years while serving as CEO of IOOF-acquired Lonsdale Financial Group.

WAG chair Lee Iafrate.

Also no secret is WAG did some chest beating about two non-disclosable holdings in its 1H25 report, one of which we hear is a stake in listed microcap Centrepoint Alliance. These holdings, WAG said, could help it “play a key role in the consolidation of the financial services industry”.

Or what we might call a roll-up of Sequoia and Centrepoint, of which WAG owns 6 per cent. Just a guess! Iafrate had nothing to say about it when we called.

Couple that with the resignation of David Coulter, the CFO at Praemium, and who knows what’s in the offing. Coulter was Kelaher’s trusted CFO at IOOF, so isn’t it timely Kelaher’s back on the scene and Coulter’s deciding to hang up his hat at Praemium all of a sudden?

Meanwhile, there’s the buyout activity at Kelaher’s old shop, Insignia, with a private equity tug of war taking place between Bain and CC Capital, both of whom have offered $5 per share and pushed out Brookfield, who had been circling as of a fortnight ago.

Should either the Bain or CC offer be accepted it will effectively scratch Insignia from the financial advice hierarchy and leave AMP atop of the pyramid by itself. As for the bottom end, well, it’s a clutch of firms swimming in the same pools of liquidity. Could be hunting season to mash a few together?

Out on a limb

Only in the Land and Environment Court will you find the cream of society fighting to the death over a bunch of trees. Where else does great wealth meet even greater pettiness and merge it with the exorbitant fees of Senior Counsel?

Philanthropists Andrew and Renata Kaldor have just emerged battered and sore from one such battle, both respondents in a taxing case brought by a very unhappy neighbour.

A line of 22 trees on the Kaldor side encroached on the boundary line of businessman Anthony Maurici’s pad in Sydney’s waterfront suburb of Woolwich, the height and overhang of the offending Lilly Pillies said to have blocked Maurici’s views and caused “damage by leaf drop”.

The Kaldors — Andrew is the brother of art collector and philanthropist John Kaldor, who’s married to Sussan Group owner Naomi Milgrom — spent at least a year fighting and losing this battle.

Andrew Kaldor emerged from a bruising fight in the Land and Environment Court over his trees.

Although this feud with Maurici dates back to at least 2008, the court heard, when Maurici submitted a DA for a house adjustment that the Kaldors objected to. “It is common ground that there has been, for some period of time, animosity between them,” said Justice John Robson in a finding on costs delivered on Friday.

Maurici proved himself to be a seasoned foe, or what Robson dubbed a “particularly experienced litigant”, which is why he was awarded the initial judgment to have 21 of the 22 offending trees pruned. It’s true, he really does have a track record of courtroom triumphs. Past victories for Maurici include a 2005 case against the NSW Valuer-General over how it valued his property for land tax purposes, a case that went to the High Court.

Another was when he sued his vet over a verbal mix-up in 1991 which caused the family dog, named Arnold Legal Beagle, to be neutered by accident. Maurici had asked the court for more than $57,000 in damages, vexation and distress but in the end he was awarded a tenth of that amount.

A similarly disappointing result hit him last week, with Robson dismissing Maurici’s claim for costs against the Kaldors on the basis it was “not just and reasonable to so order”. Hopefully it’s the last we’ll hear of it.