The key man behind mRNA vaccine deal; Court rules Macquarie must sell Connective stake

Will the multibillion-dollar collapse of Probuild be a blessing or a curse for Hawthorn? Illustration: Rod Clement.

Investment banker cum private equiteer Robin Bishop was just another number in Victoria’s burgeoning coronavirus count in January.

But on Thursday the BGH Capital founding partner was a key man in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s deal with pharmaceutical giant Moderna to build the southern hemisphere’s first mRNA vaccine manufacturing hub in Victoria.

ScoMo, his Health Minister Greg Hunt and Member for Chisholm Gladys Lui were on campus at Monash University on Thursday to unveil the multi-billion-dollar deal, with former Macquarie exec Bishop watching from the sidelines as adviser to the federal government on the deal.

Bishop was approached mid-last year to act for the commonwealth as negotiations to build the research and development hub were narrowed down to two parties – Moderna and CSL.

Bishop was prepared to do the work for free and since then has been integral to the process, which on Thursday saw Hunt and Moderna’s boss in Australia Michael Azrak sign the deal.

ScoMo singled out Bishop for special thanks in the announcement, describing his efforts as integral to getting the deal done.

Margin Call understands Liberal Party donor Bishop has had three jabs of the Covid-19 vax, the third of which was, you guessed it, manufactured by Moderna.

Connective woes

Looks like there’s lots of collateral damage in the long-running court battle between mortgage broking magnate Sherman Ma of ASX-listed Liberty Financial fame and mortgage aggregation business Connective, not least of which is Macquarie Group.

Ma, a former Young Rich Lister, has funded the legal action by minority shareholder Sofianos Tsialtas of Slea Group against Connective, which is now valued at a cool $250m.

Sherman Ma

Macquarie has lost its 25 per cent stake in Connective as a result of the judgment and must sell for what it originally paid – a paltry $5m. That’s a $57m haircut on its investment.

Slea has won the court case – over the issue of oppression of minority shareholders – but the lawyers picnic is far from over, even after a 52-day trial and 13 years of litigation that has kept Melbourne silks Philip Solomon, Michael Hodge, Peter Collinson, Michael Borsky and Christopher Young and a host of juniors in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

That will come as a relief to a few witnesses in the matter after Victorian Supreme Court judge Ross McKenzie Robson dropped a few bombs of his own in his 453-page judgment.

The 76-year-old, who the bench and bar rumour mill suggests is soon planning to retire, didn’t hold back in his assessment of some key witnesses.

Connective chief executive Glenn Lees came under particular fire. “My observation of Mr Lees’ demeanour and behaviour in the witness box, over several days, factored into the adverse findings that I have reached on his credit. Mr Lees’ preparedness to lie was dramatically brought home when documents that he should have discovered, and which were inconsistent with his evidence, were produced by AFG on subpoena,” Justice Robson said.

The company’s chairman, Graham Maloney, was also an “unreliable witness”, according to the judge. “I agree with Slea that he was untruthful in his evidence that he did not think about the pre-emptive provisions during the restructure.”

Connective executive director Mark Haron gave evidence that “in many respects were unreliable and untruthful” and he “presented as a weak man, totally overborne by Mr Lees”.

Not even the former president of AFL club Collingwood, Mark Korda, escaped the judge’s ire. “Important aspects of Mr Korda’s evidence were misleading,” he said of Korda, who was appointed a director of Connective to try to resolve the legal mess. Korda was a dishonest witness, Justice Robson concluded.

The irony of the whole mess is that Tsialtas, who works as national sales manager for Ma’s Liberty, told the court he would actually employ Lees and Haron to run Connective.

Margin Call is told the lawyers picnic will roll on, with Connective planning to appeal.

Hawks’ selection

Only the passage of time will bear out whether the multibillion-dollar collapse of construction giant Probuild in Australia ends up being a blessing or a curse for the Jeff Kennett-led AFL club Hawthorn.

The Hawks for some years have been in the process of developing what they hope will be a state-of-the-art $130m training and administrative facility – the Kennedy Community Centre – at Dingley in Melbourne’s southeast.

Former Victorian premier Kennett runs the board of the Hawks as he might the leadership team of a government, with each director bringing to the table a specific area of expertise that the 120-year-old club can leverage.

Hence in October 2020 Kennett recommended to members that they elect Probuild’s boss in Australia, Luke Stambolis, to Kennett’s board, with Stambolis already active at the Hawks as part of a committee advising on the KCC project.

“We decided the club will best be served by a senior person in construction to help us deliver the KCC … to that end, the board approached Luke,” Kennett wrote to club members ahead of the 2020 annual meeting.

Stambolis’s Hawthorn director profile even directly speaks to what contribution he is expected to make to the Hawks’ board.

“Luke has refined skills in all facets of projects from concept, feasibility, masterplanning, pre-construction and construction delivery, thus will be a fantastic asset to the board as the club continues its KCC project,” the profile reads.

Fast forward almost 18 months and now Kennett’s resident construction guru is atop a collapsed national operation, which had 15 projects under way and is now in the hands of administrators from Deloitte.

The corporate undertakers are in negotiations with builder Roberts Co, which is considering a potential takeover of the group, with its period of due diligence just extended, so that the future of Stambolis is pretty uncertain.

The demise of Probuild might indeed mean that Stambolis has loads more time to devote to the KCC development, which includes construction of a $100m headquarters and community facilities across 28ha.

The site will include an MCG-sized training oval and elite aquatic and gym facilities for the Hawks men’s and women’s teams, with the main oval to host home games for a future Hawthorn AFLW team, as well as VFL and community matches.

The project has been on the table for more than five years, with construction set to commence mid-this year, although the project as far as we can see has not yet gone to tender.

Probuild, we suspect, need not apply.