Corporate raider’s threat to pull Scotch College bequest; Optus on PR recruitment drive

Scotch College’s Tim Shearer, centre, with former Hawthorn stars David Parkin, left, and Peter Hudson.

Corporate raider is the term used most often to describe businessman Peter Yunghanns. Benefactor might be more apt these days – it’s been his longstanding commitment to bequeath a seven-figure sum to Melbourne’s Scotch College when the inevitable occurs.

That was the plan until a month or two ago. So dissatisfied has the 84-year-old become with ongoing events at the school, and the behaviour of its councillors, that he’s threatening to withdraw his offer entirely. A coterie of his lunch buddies, all similarly outraged, are said to be doing the same.

Melbourne businessman Peter Yunghanns.

The nub of their gripe is the abrupt sacking of Scotch principal Matthew Leeds days before his tenure was supposed to begin in January last year, and then the fiasco that overwhelmed the search for his replacement. It was said, for example, that an overseas candidate couldn’t be considered because of the difficulties procuring a work visa – never mind that almost every Scotch principal has come from the United Kingdom.

Fed up, Yunghanns took to his keyboard. “I have determined to revise my estate planning,” he wrote to Tim Shearer, the executive director of the Scotch College Foundation, in an email on February 27. “The foundation is extremely well funded and a bequest of a seven-figure amount is merely a drop in the ocean.”

Copied into the email were more than a dozen Scotch College councillors, names such as Jonathan Buckley, who chime with old money significance, Corrs partner John Walter, Bell Potter stockbroking director ­Michael Sim, and former Hawthorn AFL player and Freehills partner Richard Loveridge.

Yunghanns gave a deadline of 14 days to respond. As the final hours approached, his phone rang with a lunch invitation, a call Yunghanns described as an “incident (exemplifying) the ineptness and incompetence of the communicative skills of the council and in particular its chairman (Betta Foods Australia CEO Alex Sloan).”

“It is comforting to know that the foundation is so well funded that a seven-figure bequest is of no significance,” Yunghanns wrote in a follow-up email on March 15.

And it looks like Scotch College has shrugged off Yunghanns’ threat. A spokesman told Margin Call: “Scotch College would like to thank Mr Yunghanns for his support of the school over the years. The school has been fortunate that so many members of its community have unconditionally given to it since it opened its doors in 1851. It has a proud history and with a new headmaster … we will continue to respect and honour the past while we forge the next iteration of Scotch’s bright future.”

Goodbye to all that, then, if one reads between the lines.

Presumably the financial hit won’t be totally lost on Shearer. If his job could be condensed to a sentence, it would be something akin to paying house calls on the elderly and cajoling them into signing away cheques to the school; a seven-figure loss is not to be sniffed at.

Shearer’s other job, of course, is on the board of Hawthorn Football Club. He narrowly survived re-election in 2021 and is one of the few acolytes of former president Jeff Kennett still left in the room. It’s amusing that he also led a board subcommittee that’s spent years vying for funding out of the Victorian government to upgrade the Hawks’ Dingley headquarters.

Not a dime has been forthcoming in that effort … until a few days ago, when the Labor government finally relented with a $15m investment. Anything to do with Kennett’s departure and a newly minted successor in Andy Gowers taking his place?

Kennett had been incessant in his criticism of Premier Daniel Andrews on Twitter. But surely Chairman Dan isn’t that petty.

Tough call at Optus

Has the penny finally dropped for Kelly Bayer Rosmarin at Optus?

It’s been a horror six months at the telco since a cyber attack laid waste to its infrastructure and exposed the data of millions of past and present customers.

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin talks with F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo at the recent grand prix in Melbourne.

Optus executive Sally Oelerich went on to concede that she could have done more with her stakeholder engagement. That’s a polite way of putting it.

She and Optus VP Andrew Sheridan are on a recruitment drive for three skilled hands to fortify the telco’s clunky, slow-moving PR machine. We suspect it will take more than that to restore Bayer Rosmarin to corporate glory.

The roles advertised are for a senior adviser of media and corporate affairs, an associate director of media and corporate affairs, and a senior corporate affairs manager.

Far be it from our small minds to dissect the difference between each of those roles. Suffice it to say there’s plenty to get done.

Opening the mail

Paul Graham, CEO of Australia Post, has been doing his best to palm off Christine Holgate and her mob at rival logistics firm Team Global Express for nigh on a year.

TGE has nudged, kicked and prodded Australia Post for access to its last mile infrastructure and parcel locker network, offering to pay a partnership fee for the privilege. Letters have been dispatched, emissaries appointed and hushed meetings called; it’s all been to no avail.

Team Global Express chief executive Christine Holgate. Picture: Getty Images

On Wednesday, however, TGE was given a modicum of hope when Gina Cass-Gottlieb, chair of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, told the National Press Club the ACCC was, indeed, investigating anti-competitive concerns with Australia Post. Specifically, the ACCC was “considering” the matter, but only a mook wouldn’t get the hint.

The complaints are not limited to TGE; they’ve also been levelled by the Conference of Asia Pacific Express Carriers, a body representing DHL, FedEx and UPS.

“Those questions have been raised with us,” Cass-Gottlieb told the NPC. “We are considering whether there are competition questions here, but we recognise it sits in a broader government review policy context.”

That review was announced by the government earlier this month and is examining the modernisation of Australia Post in an age where letter deliveries are a drain on its profit base.

It would be remiss of us not to note, too, that Holgate has been a fixture in Canberra since the election. Documents released under a Freedom of Information request revealed that Treasurer Jim Chalmers pencilled Holgate into his diary for a 20-minute chat on August 2, sandwiching her between a briefing with Penny Wong and another line item scheduled after Question Time that needed to be redacted. We hear she’s cultivating friends on all sides about this matter.