Comyn spinner? Odd pick for ABA

Cartoon: Rod Clement

The appointment of Malcolm Turnbull’s former aide Sally Cray as the chief spinner for the banking industry has Canberra watchers perplexed at how Matt Comyn could have so misread the likely ramifications.

Comyn, the consummate networker, has barely put a foot wrong in his post-royal commission dealings with the government, and especially with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

He has only been leading the Australian Banking Association (ABA) since Christmas, when by rotation ANZ’s Shayne Elliott concluded his two years in the role. The CommBank’s chief teller wasn’t even on the banking board when they made the risky appointment of former Labor premier Anna Bligh as its chief executive in 2017 during Andrew Thorburn’s reign. It was then a testy treasurer Scott Morrison in the Turnbull government who welcomed Bligh into their increasingly fraught pre-royal commission dialogue.

But this week’s announcement — delayed as long as they could, so as not to be a sideshow to the Turnbull book — has insiders wondering why Comyn would risk his insider status.

Especially as the federal government will be seeking the smoothest post-COVID-19 discourse.

Sure she was briefly one of the most powerful women in the country when she ran PM Turnbull’s office. And despite only five indexed mentions in the 700-page Turnbull autobiography, she was far more than his principal private secretary. Indeed, in his formal acknowledgments, Turnbull writes Cray “became an honorary daughter” having been with him almost continually since 2006, barring a brief corporate affairs stint at the ABC.

Since publication, and in the wake of queries over private conversation accuracy, Turnbull has advised he’d in part also relied on contemporaneous notes taken by Cray.

The Darling Point-based Cray has been with the communications agency 89 Degrees East since departing the Turnbull office in 2018, and has also set up her own consultancy with former colleague Peter Anstee.

Insiders suggest Comyn’s own corporate affairs chief Andrew Hall, the former National Party federal director, was the architect of Cray’s appointment to replace Nathalie Samia as the ABA’s public affairs boss at their O’Connell St secretariat.

Float sunk

The Scott Bookmyer-led masters of the universe in the Aussie outpost of private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts might be wondering which sharemarket gods they’ve offended.

Recent times have seen KKR’s multi-billion-dollar plans to flog the Ahmed Fahour-managed Latitude Financial and Paul Waterson-run hospitality roll-up Australian Venue Co shelved, the later thanks to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Recent days have seen Waterson out in the mainstream media urging the Morrison government to tell the hospitality sector when it will be allowed to re-open.

“The longer this goes the more chance that there will be many publicans who tragically won’t recover,” Waterson warned.

In the last full year before the downturn, AVC, which KKR bought from former Spotless boss and still shareholder Bruce Dixon, made a net loss of $3.9m on $350.7m in revenue. That compared to a loss in the year before that of $2.7m.

Towards a float, Waterson and his private equity masters last month struck a $100m deal to buy the Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda and the Garden State in Melbourne’s CBD, among a total of eight leasehold venues, from the Sand Hill Road group, but Waterson is now saying that’s off thanks to unfolding market conditions.

He says there may be an opportunity to revisit the deal later this year or early next if things turn around. The buy was to have added 15 per cent to AVC’s top-line earnings — an important boost to any float, which the private equiteers had been hawking about Asia just a few months ago.

So the new coronavirus is a killer for KKR’s plans to offload the investment, which employs almost 5000 people and has been on its books since 2017.

No mention of the divestment imperative, however, in Waterson’s comments this week.

In preparation for the sharemarket offering, Dixon at the end of last year left the parent board, as did KKR operative Boris Dangubic, although Oz boss Bookmyer and local MD Gareth Woodbridge remain.

Other new non-executive directors have been added in recent weeks, including former Bellamy’s Organic director Shirley Liew and Vicinity director Janette Kendall, while Tourism Australia chairman Bob East continues to also chair the pub, bar and restaurant group.

With no word on when they will be able to start pulling pints again, the results for the second half are being smashed by the closures — far from ideal to pump up a fresh float prospectus with.

Home entertainment

As a senior project manager at BHP Billiton during the noughties, Will Dobbyn played an integral role in project managing the global rollout of SAP for the Australian mining and minerals giant.

He then turned his hand to being the sales boss at sporting apparel brands Oakley and 2XU.

But these days Dobbyn finds himself performing a role he never ever imagined: heading Australia’s No 1 online retailer of premium adult goods, Wildsecrets, which is apparently booming in the COVID-19 crisis.

Since May last year he’s been the general manager of PHE International (the company that owns Wildsecrets).

Lingerie sales have taken off because apparently people are wanting to feel good about themselves again, Indeed sales are lifting across the entire sex toy range. Women are searching more than men; the highest increase in sales is the 25-34 age bracket; and Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are the busiest nights for sales (they used to be the worst).

No word if Dobbyn has pitched his new wares to his former colleagues, but he is working hard to get banks, agencies, advertising outlets and even some notable social network platforms to get involved with Wildsecrets.

His biggest selling point?

“The latest sex toys are so well designed and made they would not get a second glance if left on a coffee table,’’ Dobbyn says.

McKenzie’s mates

Senator Bridget McKenzie continues to purge herself during lockdown.

Hardly a confession but this week she broke her silence on the 2019 sports rorts scandal that has interrupted her cabinet career over her membership of a clay target shooting club that got a grant.

And she’s also disclose a few gifts she may not have actually wanted. One keen supporter has gifted her some baby spinach, broccoli and salad leaves. A 1.5kg box of each from Bulmer Farms in Victoria’s Gippsland.

Bridget McKenzie. Picture: AAP

Her parliamentary colleagues will be calling her Popeye on their return the national capital.

She’s also scored a classic six red, six white box from Colin Campbell at Campbells Wines in Rutherglen.

It seems the Campbell family have been big believers since the government launched the export and regional wine support package in 2017.

Her own biggest recent package came from a fan, Leo Kelly, who supplied her with four dozen bottles of homemade wine. And her lockdown has been cosier still, having been gifted a few good books to read.