Dining in a social era of Zoomsters

Illustration: Rod Clement

The video calling app Zoom is doing more than keeping at-home workers connected during the coronavirus crisis. Last week the California company’s conferencing product ranked among the top downloads in Apple’s app store.

Set up for workplace collaboration, it was previously mostly the domain of tech-savvy Atlassian team workers, then adopted by ­social influencers and university-attending gen Zs, who see Skype as old technology.

Now the video conferencing ­facility is being embraced by stuck-at-home suburban families in these times of isolation. Not just for family conferencing, but even joyous dinner parties.

This weekend Eddie McGuire and his wife Carla are having a Zoomster dinner party, now that there’s no footy to call. Their guest list will all be at their own homes, with the videoing dinner party attendees all keeping safe, through physical distancing.

But they will actually be keeping in touch via their screens by working around the soul-destroying social distancing rules.

Apparently the diners will all be imbibing the same wine at the dinner party, presumably out of McGuire’s plentiful cellar.

The software company was founded in 2011, then floated last year as a profitable unicorn, backed by the Gordon R itter-founded Emergence Capital.

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Enterprises Limited took a stake in the app, which has had huge recommendations through its usage by Jimmy Fallon and Ellen de Generes.

The Indonesian president Joko Widodo used his Zoom Room last week.

Zoom is free for under 40 minutes one-on-one, then its cheapest version is $20.99 a month.

Zoom is headed in Sydney by Michael Chetner, who was previously at Cisco, and Zoom’s first Australian employee back in April 2017. He has around 90 staff.

The Zoom boom has seen its share price soar on the NASDAQ to be at a record $US160. Over the last month it’s up 50 per cent, valuing the company at $US44bn ($74bn), buoyed by adding more active users in 2020 than in all of last year.

“We think these times have the potential to revolutionise the way we connect,” Chetner told Margin Call.

War on retail landlords

No surprise that retailer Mark McInnes, along with the jawboning billionaire Solly Lew at Premier Investments, are leading the charge of retail tenants looking for relief in the COVID-19 shutdown.

The duo have got Alan Jones, the influential 2GB broadcaster, onside after McInnes said landlords had failed to reach out to offer any postponement of rent repayments.

“I think they’re all hoping that retailers will pay them their monthly rent on April 1. They’ve got another thing coming,” McInnes warned.

“Not one landlord has rang me to say Mark, for the next 30, 60 or 90 days, don’t pay any rent, or pay a percentage of sale, to keep people employed.”

McInnes said shopping centre foot traffic had often dropped to zero.

While McInnes wasn’t prepared to name and shame landlords, Jones intends to do so on his radio program.

The list includes the Bob Johnston-led GPT Group, Mirvac’s Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, and the Vicinity Centres boss Grant Kelley. They have shopping centres where the tenants include Peter Alexander, Just Jeans, Smuggle, Portmans and Jay Jays, some of the brands in the Premier Investments stable.

Retailers have only had words of comfort from the federal government.

“Every energy company, every landlord, every bank needs to work proactively and generously with their customers because there is an alignment of interest here,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has urged. “We want all of their businesses to get to the other side.”

Premier recently advised during the past 12 months, 21 of its unprofitable apparel stores had been closed as a result of unreasonable rental costs.

Eagle has stalled

The eagle has landed. Crash landed, actually.

Former Macquarie banker and newly appointed National Australia Bank director Simon McKeon’s passion project, the five-year redevelopment of the iconic chair lift at Arthurs Seat on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula, has flopped.

The McKeon-chaired and part-owned Arthurs Seat Eagle Pty Ltd was on Monday quietly placed into administration and its operations as a key tourist attraction in the region shut.

Administrators Robert Ditrich and Craig Crosbie from PwC are now in charge of the failed operations, which opened in December 2016 at an estimated cost of $20m.

The company signed a 50-year lease on the site with the Victorian government in 2015 and went on to develop a gondola-style lift running from a base station in Dromana to the Arthurs Seat summit.

McKeon’s fellow investors who appear to have done their money on the regional project include Melbourne transport, logistics and property billionaire Peter Gunn and his family via their PGA Group.

According to this newspaper’s The List, Gunn is worth $1.54bn.

Arthurs Seat Eagle boss Tom Smith posted a “coronavirus update” onto the company’s website on Tuesday, informing customers the attraction was closed “until further notice”.

“We regret having to take this step and we are looking forward to the time when we can welcome you back to Arthurs Seat Eagle,” Smith wrote, without mention of the appointment of administrators.

A recorded message said, “we have been directed to close due to the coronavirus crisis”.

Margin Call understands that former AMP chair McKeon, who has long held an expansive home at nearby McCrae, and Gunn plan to settle moneys owed to all outstanding trade creditors and staff. The business, which is believed to have been cashflow positive since day one, had been hit hard this year by the smoke haze that engulfed the region in January, heavy rains in February and then COVID-19 in March.

Back to Bleak City

The departing Regal Funds Management portfolio manager Julian Bab arczyand his interior designer wife Olivia are ready to move the family back to Melbourne. But a $13m-plus offer for their Vaucluse home has not been enough to see the relocation signed off.

They’ve just settled on a Toorak home on pricey Montalto Avenue. The couple slapped a caveat on the property some 18 months ago, and have just gone through with the $7.205m purchase.

Olivia is no doubt keen to put her design stamp on the original three-bedroom home. She’s had similar projects before, renovating their Vaucluse listing and another on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Julian has spent 14 years at Regal Funds Management, who look after a somewhat-dented $2bn for wealthy investors.

The family’s six-bedroom home comes with a $14m-$15m guide with the Wentworth Road home heading to private auction where only registered bidders will be allowed on April 4.

Hot rod mystery

Would retailer Richard Murray really be so gauche?

Who is the mystery driver of the JB Hi-Fi sports car regularly spotted zipping about Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs, which has caught the eye of locals? The sleek Saab is painted bright yellow with a black roof, just like the corporate colours of consumer electronics giant JB Hi-Fi. The number plate of the mysterious sports car is JBH1F1.

The vehicle has tinted windows so anyone pulling up alongside can’t see if it is JB boss Murray behind the wheel.

But Margin Call hears that the hot wheels don’t belong to the chief (it wouldn’t really look the part in the drive of his historic $11m Toorak mansion Glyn) or anyone else at JB Hi-Fi.

In fact, the retailer has no idea who owns the car or why they are such a fan, with the matter an enduring mystery to the retailer. Margin Call wonders if it might be John “Deeksie” Deeks, the TV celebrity and voiceover man who’s been voicing JB Hi-Fi TV ads for decades.

Deeksie is the man behind the JB catch phrase, “JB you’ve done it again!” — and certainly should have the royalties piled high to buy such a flashy car.

Hotelier hard hit

Restaurateur Justin Hemmes has advised his family’s Sydney restaurants and bars have ceased trading “for the foreseeable future”. Only his bottle shops at The Newport, Allawah Hotel and The Royal remain open.

“This is the unfortunate reality of COVID-19 and all Australians are being severely impacted through no fault of their own. It is a particularly devastating time for the hospitality industry, but nothing is more important than health,” he said. “I am heartbroken that this is happening but remain focused on the light at the end of the tunnel.”