Crown Resorts lets slip grand Sydney plan
There’s plenty of change afoot at Crown Resorts as it works frantically to avoid having its Sydney licence heavily encumbered or even scrapped by the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority inquiry fronted by former judge Patrica Bergin.
The inquiry heard on Thursday that two stars of the show over recent months — Crown’s Australian Resorts chief executive Barry Felstead and the group’s chief legal officer, Joshua Preston, who both were given comprehensive grillings highlighting their multiple failures to do their jobs properly — may not even continue to have their jobs under a proposed restructure by chief executive Ken Barton.
While the plan is still to be approved by the Crown board, Barton wants to scrap their roles and have the operational executives of each of the group’s casinos in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth report directly to him.
“It is important to get a clear line of sight for the opening of Sydney,’’ Barton told Bergin, also revealing the opening date of December 14 for Crown Sydney.
Two rooms on the podium level, to be known as the Crystal and Mahogany rooms, will be open to the public that day, with 129 tables and 66 electronic games terminals.
Some 20-odd floors above will be 12 Sky Salons for VIP highrollers offering 30 traditional table games. They will open early next year.
Barton also revealed that a new anti-money-laundering program was being rolled out across Crown’s casinos following evidence presented to the inquiry of its links to organised crime and money-laundering and the massive shortcomings in its previous processes.
But one question bothering Bergin was how Crown was opening a casino without having a fully tested anti-money-laundering policy in place.
Barton assured her it would be rolled out at its Melbourne and Perth properties by December, just in time for Sydney’s opening.
Bergin, a day after saying Crown’s poor transparency had reached “debacle” levels, looked unconvinced.
Golden memories
She may not have an hour-long documentary in her honour like Cathy Freeman, but with Sydney Olympics nostalgia reaching boiling point this week, Margin Call thought it only fitting to check in with women’s water polo gold medallist and first lady of hardware and staplers Liz Scott (nee Weekes).
Twenty years on from the Stingers victory, the former goalie is coaching a junior girls team in Perth, and marked the occasion alongside husband and Wesfarmers chief Rob Scott in a Zoom call with former teammates dotted across the country, along with former coach Istvan Gorgenyi, who dialled in from his native Hungary.
While her days storming Olympics Committee meetings to fight for gender equality are over, she says she still gets stopped in the street by people who remember fondly the final against the US and the battle to get there.
As for the roar of the 17,000-strong crowd, that still gives her goosebumps. “The crowd at the final was phenomenal. As a water polo player you got used to a small crowd but to play in front of a home crowd, it was phenomenal,” she told this column, saying the whole experience had been life-changing — in more ways than one.
The Olympics also marked the first year in her courtship with the then rowing champion Scott before his switch to the boardroom — their busy training schedules at the time helping to “keep the excitement” in the early days.
The two now prefer to participate in their respective sports through their two children and, while border restrictions, especially those of WA Premier Mark McGowan, weighed on any chance of a physical team reunion, she says time in lockdown had been key in keeping her jetsetting husband in one spot, even if it was parked on the couch watching Seinfeld re-runs with their teenage son.
Numbers crunched
Job cuts have been rife across the big four accounting firms, but we wonder whether PricewaterhouseCoopers chief people officer Dorothy Hisgrove had a part to play in her own exit from the firm last month.
Hisgrove, a previous AFL and AusPost executive, reportedly retired from the firm at the end of last month, capping out a tumultuous period of staff stand-downs and pay cuts in the wake of COVID-19.
Surely someone told Hisgrove she could have stuck around for the one-off “thank you” bonus from chief Tom Seymour, though perhaps not enough to offset the impact of sweeping changes across the whole of the industry.
If only PwC had a people and culture head — oh, wait, that’s new recruit Catherine Walsh, the former Spotless group executive who reported to director Peter Tompkins and whose time at AusPost crosses over with Hisgrove’s.
After cutting 5 per cent of the firm’s Australian workforce so far this year, here’s hoping she’ll have a smoother ride.
Busy time for Hackett
Former MLC Life boss David Hackett has been a busy man since he stepped down from the firm in January.
In July, this very column revealed he’d been drafted in as part-time chair at the “Afterpay for real estate vendors”, CampaignAgent, and now he’s popped up at the Liberman family-backed Merricks Capital.
Touted as a “people person”, Hackett joins as a director alongside chief executive Adrian Redlich and managing director Andrew Torrington.
Healthy day trade
Retail investors piled into the market in March as volatility reigned supreme, but it’s the movements of HBF insurance boss John Van der Wielen that caught our eye.
The head of WA’s largest health insurer is said to be a prolific trader, with millions of his personal wealth invested in the market, including for a short time holdings in his listed peer Medibank.
Margin Call hears he joined the register alongside chief Craig Drummond earlier this year, only to promptly exit five days later.
With the rise of day trading through the pandemic that’s no surprise, though perhaps someone should alert NIB chief Mark Fitzgibbon just in case.
Sorry from some, but others are silent
Sydney University VC Mark Scott stepped up to the plate to concede his institution had hopelessly failed Jewish students, but others in similar positions were not so forthcoming.
Medical skirmish gets pulses racing
Most lawyers will tell you their work doesn’t save lives, but a case starting on Monday could prove the exception.