Colin Fagen in sudden exit from QBE

Illustration: Rod Clement.

At least one top exec at QBE won’t be around to see any takeover offer for the bumbling general insurer by German giant Allianz come to fruition.

Group chief operations officer Colin Fagen, who under boss John Neal had been on a rapid recent upward trajectory at the group, is out the door.

QBE chief executive John Neal. (Renee Nowytarger/The Australian)

It’s understood negotiations between respective lawyers towards settling an acceptable exit package for Fagen, 49, started a week ago.

Until last year he was chief strategy officer and before that ran QBE’s Australian and New Zealand operations.

But Neal only got around to telling the market that his key man was out after trading had closed yesterday, when analysts were otherwise occupied with AMP’s mega loss. And only after we called them.

Before the announcement, the stock closed at $12.11, down 2.2 per cent.

The most recent annual report reveals Fagen, who is also the newly appointed president of the Insurance Council of Australia, was paid almost $2 million. It’s believed he has several years to run on his contract and is pushing for a payout that would reflect the term of his employment agreement.

Word is that Fagen’s depth of corporate history on Neal’s group means he is likely to have done well from the settlement. There are more skeletons at that place than you could fit in Rose Porteous’s closet.

The QBE board is led by Marty Becker, who has plenty on his plate.

Last month the insurer’s stock ran hot on rumours that Allianz was set to lob a $20 billion bid following reports that Neal had met with his Allianz counterpart Oliver Baete before Christmas.

Becker’s board is believed to have considered Fagen a potential successor to Neal, who has been in the top job for almost five years.

Looks like German-born Neal, 52, may want to stick around a bit longer for the first-class flights to Europe to bring any Allianz deal over the line.

Worner to front up

Seven West Media CEO Tim Worner will front up at the media company’s interim results next Wednesday as the sex-governance-and-expenses scandal rages on.

“It’s business as usual,” said a Seven spokesman. “Tim will be fronting the presentation and will be taking questions from analysts and media, as normal practice.”

Amber Harrison asks about Sheila McGregor's departure from the SWM board

Worner’s highly anticipated performance will be his first public outing since his once mistress Amber Harrison, the former Seven executive assistant who after years of litigation, took the nuclear option in December.

Billionaire Seven chairman Kerry Stokes will follow Worner’s performance from Colorado, where he has been sheltering from the Australian heat.

Also business as usual was SWM’s share price yesterday, which fell 1.3 per cent to close at 73c. The media company has now fallen on five consecutive trading days, losing 11.3 per cent of its value — well over $200m — since the board announced Worner would stay on as CEO in a statement to the market last Friday.

That loss of market capitalisation is likely to come up during Worner’s roadshow after the results to meet analysts and shareholders.

Also business as usual was Harrison’s Twitter account, which was lobbing still more grenades at Stokes’s empire after the market closed yesterday. Don’t expect her to stop throwing by next Wednesday.

Curtis talks turkey

Businessman Nick Curtis was a surprise visitor to the Canberra parliamentary coffee shop Aussies yesterday. “Just talking to people,” was all Curtis, the former chairman of rare-earths outfit Lynas and father of inside trader Oliver Curtis, would tell us about the trip to Capital Hill.

The Sydney-based mining entrepreneur Curtis was on an outdoor table with some associates and Angus Barker, a former investment banker at Flagstaff Partners. Barker now works as an adviser for Trade and Investment Minister Steven Ciobo.

Nick Curtis, left, at signing ceremony with WA Premier Colin Barnett.

Curtis is an investor in the Balla Balla Infrastructure Group’s West Australian greenfields iron ore project, which is reportedly worth $5.6bn — if the financing gets off the ground. In January, Curtis was part of a Balla Balla entourage that met the endangered WA Premier Colin Barnett.

Also in the afternoon Aussies crowd yesterday was deposed senator Rod Culleton and his trusty chief of staff, Margaret Menzel.

Lobbyists for our big four banks, be warned. His senator’s office might have been confiscated, along with his membership of Leigh Clifford’s Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, but it seems Culleton’s parliamentary pass is still intact.

Roxy scales back

Meanwhile, Nick Curtis’s daughter-in-law, publicist Roxy Jacenko, is also getting on with business while her white-collar crook husband Oliver Curtis serves out his time in Cooma Correctional Centre.

But her plans are not quite as grand as before the father of two went behind bars.

In 2014, Jacenko paid $2.66m for a building on Elizabeth Street in fashionable Paddington, as she put her well-manicured hands to a side career as a residential property developer.

In mid 2015, Jacenko submitted plans courtesy of SJB to Clover Moore’s City of Sydney to build six apartments at a cost of $1.7m. Approval was granted at the start of last year.

But then hubby went to trial on charges of insider trading and was sent to jail at the end of June.

By early September, Jacenko had changed her mind as Curtis awaited his appeal hearing, which he later lost. She’d also had a well-publicised breast cancer scare, prompting Jacenko to scale back her ambitions and spend a lesser $430,000.

Roxy Jacenko out the back of her new corporate headquarters (aka Selfie HQ)

The building will now house her PR and talent management business, Sweaty Betty.

That work is almost finished and her enterprise will move from its premises at Cross Street, Double Bay, where beauty queen Imelda Roche (a good friend of Gina Rinehart) is her landlord, to the new Paddo digs.

Meanwhile, Curtis continues to languish in prison serving out his year-long term, missing the couple’s Instagram star daughter Pixie’s recent first day at an exclusive eastern suburbs private school. He’ll be out in about five months.