Cloud over US gabfest guest list
As the nation’s richest gather aboard billionaire Lindsay Fox’s Love Boat “conception party”, a rival set of Australia’s most powerful are also scheduled to gather in the northern hemisphere — or at least that was the plan before Malcolm Turnbull’s underwhelming campaign.
Phil Scanlan’s annual gabfest — the Australian American Leadership Dialogue — assembles in Washington DC early next week.
It kicks off with welcome drinks on Tuesday in the Kennedy Caucus Room — one of the American capital’s grander rooms — and finishes on Thursday with a barbecue at ambassador Joe Hockey’s residence, the one with the shabby grass tennis court.
But with the election result still uncertain, it’s not clear which Australian politicians are going to be there to join Scanlan and his AALD board.
Former US ambassador down under Jeffrey Bleich will not be there.
But the rest of the board — which is co-chaired by former ambassador Kim Beazley and former deputy PM Mark Vaile, and includes private equity boss Ben Gray and former public servant Lisa Paul — are scheduled to attend.
Since it was founded by Scanlan back in 1992 at the end of president George HW Bush’s reign, the AALD has been a rites of passage for ambitious Australian politicians.
It’s an opportunity to garner connections with our American overlords — seen by many as a crucial tick of approval for those pursuing the highest office back home.
Both Turnbull and Tony Abbott were regulars.
Kevin Rudd even turned up in 2010, weeks after he was brutally removed from office — the first time around.
Two takers
This year, we understand only two sitting federal Australian politicians have confirmed their attendance at Phil Scanlan’s knees-up: Stephen Conroy, the shadow minister for defence, and Stuart Robert, the former Coalition minister who was demoted in February after a questionable private trip to China in 2014 became public.
Understandably, it would seem neither are too concerned about getting to Yarralumla in a hurry for the ministerial swearing-in ceremony.
A host of would-be ministers in our 45th Parliament have been unable to commit.
Many alliance aficionados were already closely watching the attendance at this year’s gathering, as it is the first since the American arm of Scanlan’s ensemble amputated itself last year to become the rival outfit, the American Australian Council.
Job pain
What could be more awkward than a Junior Woodchuck who used to work for you getting your job?
How about if you found out about Junior’s success through the media?
That’s what happened to Richard Galvin, head of equity capital markets at Rob Priestley’s JPMorgan — or so he thought.
A fortnight ago Galvin found out Jabe Jerram — who is more than a decade Galvin’s junior and used to report to him at rival integrated investment bank Goldman Sachs — had been appointed JPMorgan’s head of ECM, a job Galvin was appointed to only a year ago.
The hire was handled with the sensitivity of a Greg Inglis tackle. Apparently, Galvin had no idea.
So what is Galvin’s job now? Good question. And one JPMorgan wouldn’t answer yesterday.
For what it’s worth, JPMorgan reportedly said it had an ongoing role in mind for him. But the ongoing mystery about exactly what that role is helps to explain Galvin’s disappearance from the bank after what has been described to us as a dummy spit for the ages.
Will Galvin return? Apparently that depends on what he’s offered. Brave negotiating strategy.
Fund battle
The showdown over the future of Adam Tindall’s AMP Capital China Growth Fund is now only three weeks away.
Activist investors want the $430 million listed China share fund — which is trading way below net tangible asset value — shut down and the money returned to shareholders.
Leading the activist tilt are Hong Kong-based hedge fund Lim Advisors and Wilson Asset Management chairman Geoff Wilson.
Meanwhile Tindall and his AMP Capital team want to revamp the underperforming China fund.
And presiding over the crucial extraordinary general meeting? Turns out it’s none other than Deborah Page, who the AMP Capital fund has appointed as an independent chair just for the July 28 meeting.
Page is certainly battle hardy after her starring turn in the attempted takeover of Investa Office Fund by Darren Steinberg’s Dexus Property Group.
The takeover — supported by IOF chair Page, but rejected by a majority of investors — fell over in April after a bloody, if tedious, corporate fight. Perhaps bravely, Tindall has gambled that Page’s bad fortune isn’t contagious.
Scullion vindicated
An interesting decision by the Fair Work Commission has been lost in the hurly burly of the marathon election campaign.
At about the halfway point of Turnbull’s campaign odyssey, an FWA decision found that the former head of the Indigenous Land Corporation, Michael Dillon, had “deliberately” acted “dishonestly” in an unfair dismissal case of his former ILC executive Allister McCaffrey.
The June 9 decision looks like another blot on Dillon’s copy and seeming vindication for Nigel Scullion, the man who dismissed him from the role.
Back in 2013, in the terminal days of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, Scullion denounced the appointment of Dillon — formerly a senior adviser to Labor minister Jenny Macklin — as “jobs for the boys”.
Late last year as the Coalition’s Indigenous Affairs minister, Scullion tipped Dillon out of the quango.
Ships ahoy
The superyachts of billionaire besties Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox have almost consummated in the beautiful Mediterranean.
Yesterday Solly’s 54m Maridome was spotted just past Nice, in southeast France, having travelled from St Tropez towards Italian waters.
Meanwhile, Fox’s 49m super yacht Volpini has plotted a similarly leisurely course over recent days, sailing north from Capri to be last spotted at Civitavecchia, part of greater Rome.
The septuagenarian sailors’ gentle pace is well advised ahead of the Linfox founder’s imminent “conception party”.
That will take place aboard Fox’s “Love Boat”, a cruise ship hired from the US-owned Seabourn fleet. The two sea dogs will need all their energy.
We’ve previously reported that Lew and his new partner Roza (not Rosa) were going to spend their nights aboard Maridome to avoid any awkward encounters with Lew’s ex-wife Rosie, who is also a close friend of Lindsay and his wife Paula.
Our latest mail is that Solly and Roza will actually bunker in a penthouse cabin on board the “Love Boat” itself — at least for some of the adventure. Right in the action then.
Downer dining out
Meanwhile, the yellow suitcase-carrying foreign minister who led Australia into the second Gulf War, Alexander Downer, caught up with another soon-to-be billionaire passenger on Linday Fox’s “Love Boat”, the radiant Gina Rinehart. They dined at the Waterside Inn at Bray, in Berkshire, which Lord Downer declared “magnificent”.
What a stylish way to toast the just released Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 invasion.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.