Disney executive in high demand; Sydney Uni’s dreadful deal

Western Bulldogs president Kylie Watson-Wheeler and senior coach Luke Beveridge. Picture: Michael Klein

Oh, the dangers of merely answering a phone call from a recruiter.

Doing so might just land even the most faithful corporate leader on the short-list for a job they never even wanted.

Well, that seems to be what’s happened to Kylie Watson-Wheeler, senior vice president and managing director of Disney Australia, who keeps finding herself in the running for CEO jobs outside of the Disney stable – and narrowly missing out on them anyway.

Watson-Wheeler was hardly delighted last year when she was named in contention for the role of chief executive at the AFL, a position vacated by Gillon McLachlan and a sport in which she has been passionately immersed as president of the Western Bulldogs since 2021.

It was in that capacity, in her role with the Bulldogs, that she gave a rare interview with sports radio network SEN talking of her love of Disney, where she’s worked for 20 years, but also of the inconvenience and her own displeasure at being outed as firmly in the race for another job.

Kylie Watson-Wheeler was at one point spoken of as a replacement for Gillon McLachlan as head of the AFL.

Watson-Wheeler was backed for the AFL CEO position by the code’s chair, Richard Goyder, who tried and failed to convince a clear majority of AFL commissioners to support her candidacy.

Andrew Dillon, a long-serving AFL executive, was eventually named CEO instead.

“Look, it was a challenging time. To have your name in the press everywhere about something that’s contrary to your actual job certainly wasn’t something I expected … but I have a great relationship with (Walt Disney),” Watson-Wheeler said. And one should hope so.

Because somehow Watson-Wheeler’s name has once again found its way on to another shortlist of CEO candidates, this time for the role of chief executive at Victoria Racing Club, which last month appointed AFL executive Kylie Rogers to replace Steve Rosich as its boss.

Margin Call’s impeccable understanding of the matter is that Watson-Wheeler was in the final four names for the job, alongside Rogers, a Brisbane-based racing figure, and Peter Crinis, a former Crown Resorts executive and a pal of the VRC chair Neil Wilson.

Not that Crinis’s suction with Wilson helped him much in the end (and besides, Crinis is busy enough at the moment filing legal paperwork against that rumpled deal-maker-about-town Jon Adgemis.)

But let’s not be fooled. On Watson-Wheeler’s telling, being short-listed for a role, even down to the final four candidates, doesn’t necessarily mean that she actually wanted the VRC role. In fact, quite the opposite, apparently.

As she told us: “Given my unique skill set of sports, media and entertainment, I do find myself being put on shortlists and approached for roles from time to time. That’s the recruitment business. But I am not seeking any new role, as I love and immensely enjoy what I’m currently doing.”

Not that we doubt her. But, come on, of course she’d say that!

A tote of note

And while we’re on the subject of racing clubs, Melbourne Racing Club dropped some serious coin to build a fresh fit of its administrative office at Caulfield Racecourse. Not clear what was wrong with the old space, but that was demolished and we’re hearing $23m was spent to build a veritable Taj Mahal to rival the snappy digs of the VRC.

Except the plan hasn’t quite worked out so smoothly. First off, the new administration building is somewhat empty because MRC employees are still working from home. The plan now is to try to sublease part of the office to the Melbourne Demons who need some space of their own. Yet to happen but apparently in the works.

Another regrettable kertwang is that this new building doesn’t have a decent view of the racecourse because of a design flaw of sorts. There’s said to be an old tote board blocking the view between the building and the grounds that’s really getting in the way (a tote board being used to display odds and pay-offs for each horse).

Easy enough to remove it, right? Wrong. Someone, at some point, appears to have had the tote board heritage listed, because it’s so old and special, and now it cannot be rid of at all.

Uni’s dumb deal

Benefactors and prospective students are plainly running a mile from the University of Sydney, whose brand has been trashed by management over its deadlocked negotiations with students protesting the war in Gaza.

The standoff reached a nadir a week ago – although we’re cautious about speaking too soon – when the Muslim Students Association claimed victory over vice-chancellor Mark Scott and other university officials, announcing a deal with several concessions.

The most appalling, most craven, in this series of capitulations is that the MSA will be given a seat on a working group that reviews university investment policies.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott has made more concessions. Picture John Grainger

We can only imagine the fissures in the university leadership that led to this abomination. And it might also explain why the institution, so captured by its own timidity, has finally sought external advice on how to manage this palaver.

Margin Call hears that it’s tapped Sue Cato, of Cato & Clive Partners, for advice and, seemingly, to try to rehabilitate the university’s battered image. Good luck with that! The retainer would have to be enormous.

First task for Cato could be to try convince university leaders to rip up their dodgy deal with the MSA, a group with questionable ties to Hizb ut-Tahrir (a proscribed terrorist organisation in much of the world).

But, given the brain-drain of sensible thinking by some at the top, something tells us that won’t be happening anytime soon.