The ongoing stoush between Nine Entertainment and its newspapers’ one-time controversial star columnist Clementine Ford appears to be heading inexorably to the court house.
Ford quit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in February 2019 claiming she had been given an official warning for calling Scott Morrison an “f..king disgrace”. On the way out the door, Ford took a pot shot at the newspapers’ executive editor James Chessell, now Nine publishing boss.
She later claimed the former Fairfax newspapers had shifted to the right after their acquisition by Nine Entertainment in late 2018, noting Chessell’s former gig working for Joe Hockey.
However, the most recent chapter of the dispute came in January, when the Nine newspapers abruptly pulled an interview with Ford, written by Kerrie O’Brien, promoting her new book. But what most upset Ford were comments made by Tory Maguire, who succeeded Chessell as executive editor of the Herald and The Age in July.
In a quote published by Guardian Australia columnist Amanda Meade, Maguire accused Ford of spending years “making vile and personal attacks on the journalists and editors of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age after the mastheads stopped publishing her column”.
That claim – which Ford denies, saying she has only ever targeted senior management and Chessell – has now been the subject of correspondence between Nine and Ford’s legal team, high-profile lawyer Rebekah Giles and Sydney defamation silk Sue Chrysanthou.
They claim Maguire had made out that Ford’s comments were so egregious that it required Maguire to intervene and protect her journalists, sources told Margin Call.
One letter demanded Nine, and Maguire personally, publish an apology to Ford.
In exchange, Ford would stop her legal action.
Nine’s response to that offer was brief.
“Your client’s offer is declined,” wrote Nine’s executive counsel, Larina Alick.
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Tyro woes
No doubt Mike Cannon-Brookes was a little distracted on Monday, with his joint bid for AGL alongside Brookfield swiftly rejected by the energy giant. With Macquarie, Gresham and Jarden Australia all in on the deal, there’s little doubt it’ll become a bankers’ picnic.
But the Atlassian billionaire also has a lower-profile holding in Tyro Payments, the fintech specialising in Eftpos processing, which took a bath on Monday after announcing disappointing results for the first six months of the financial year. Tyro’s shares fell 26 per cent to close at $1.62.
With his company Grok Ventures holding about 13 per cent of Tyro, according to the latest financial accounts, Cannon-Brookes would be down $40m in one day of trade.
Cannon-Brookes was last actively buying into Tyro in January last year, after shares took a dive when the company was targeted by short-sellers Fraser Perring, Aidan Lau and Gabriel Bernarde. However, since then shares have continued to fall 47 per cent.
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Kennerley intrigue
Here’s a mystery minted in the heart of Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Has Kerri-Anne Kennerley, late of Nine and Network Ten, actually sold her Woollahra pile?
In August, it was widely reported that the former Studio 10 star had landed a new suburb record in the glitzy Sydney enclave after selling her 1870s home for more than $22m. Although several luxury real estate agents had looked at the property, the deal was done off-market.
The buyer, it seemed, remained a mystery – although Nine’s prestige property reporter Lucy Macken reported they had been “introduced by international rugby star-turned-buyers agent Craig Wing”.
The sale of the two-storey mansion, set behind local dining institution Chiswick among a string of diplomatic residences, would have broken a record set by Mike Cannon-Brookes when he purchased the former German consul-general’s home for $18.5m in 2020.
Now, new plans have been lodged with Woollahra Municipal Council for a $5.5m renovation on the property on Wellington St. As part of the proposal, some of the other buildings on the property will be demolished and reconstructed, while a new pool and a covered walkway between the main house and the outbuilding will be built. The owner? One Mrs K Kennerley.
But there is a twist. Kennerley told Margin Call on Monday that the sale was still in train, albeit with a long settlement period. “I don’t know much about (the development) to be quite frank, I’m still in the house and will be for a while,” she said. “They asked if I’d sign the (application), that’s the way the system is set up.”
And what were the plans for the house? “I have absolutely no idea,” she said.
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Pratt comes clean
Spare a thought for former NSW Treasury secretary Mike Pratt, who appears to be having a little difficulty coming to terms with the circumstances of his abrupt exit last month.
Pratt found himself unceremoniously booted from his job as one of the state’s most senior bureaucrats in January and replaced by former federal Agriculture Department secretary Paul Grimes after a tumultuous time for NSW Treasury.
At the time – and in December when The Australian first reported that he was being sized up for the exit – Pratt angrily denied he was going anywhere. “I want to let you know that I have been weighing up whether to return to the private sector before the next state election after almost a decade in public service,” he wrote in a missive to staff last year.
It was certainly a difficult time in NSW Treasury. The state’s auditor-general, Margaret Crawford, was refusing to sign off on financial reports, citing “significant accounting issues”. A former KPMG partner, Brendan Lyon, told a parliamentary committee that Pratt and two other officials had subjected him to “unprofessional and ongoing personal attacks” after he contradicted their estimates of how much a special public rail assets holding company would cost.
On Monday, Pratt came clean under questioning from NSW Labor’s treasury spokesman Daniel Mookhey. “I came to an agreement. I was to resign, the Treasurer found a new secretary earlier than planned, so we came to a new agreement,” he said, referring to Liberal MP Matt Kean.
He had, as it turned out, finally received an invitation to attend hearings after it was delivered by LinkedIn. His departure had nothing to do with NSW Treasury’s issues, Pratt said.
Was he formally terminated? Yes, he was.
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Joe Gutnick’s last hurrah is finally coming to an end, as liquidators wind up the last company in the play that was supposed to put ‘diamond’ back into his moniker.