Anthony Albanese to visit Kristina Keneally in her newly adopted home of Fowler ahead of election

​Anthony Albanese is set to visit his shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally in her newly adopted home of Fowler on Wednesday.

Anthony Albanese is set to visit his shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally in her newly adopted home of Fowler on Wednesday as the senator for NSW seeks to switch from her red seat in the parliament to the green come the weekend.

In preparation for what is said to be a tightening contest with independent candidate Dai Le in the southwestern Sydney seat, former NSW premier Keneally and her Boston Consulting Group executive husband Ben Keneally were reported to have moved to Liverpool in December.

That was from their five-bedroom waterfront home a world away on Scotland Island in Pittwater, which they purchased at the end of 2017 and have called home since.

But Keneally has hardly dropped deep roots into the electorate, moving with her husband into a leased one-bedder flat in a new development overlooking the Georges River. At least she has kept waterfront views.

The couple are paying about $400 a week in rent so that if her plan for the House of Reps goes pear-shaped there won’t be much for the Keneallys to undo. They also still own their Scotland Island home.

Funny though, Keneally is said to have lived in Liverpool since before Christmas, but only last week managed to officially change her address from the northern beaches island suburb to the outer Sydney suburb of Liverpool.

Too busy campaigning, we are sure.

Anthony Albanese is heading to Kristina Keneally’s newly adopted home of Fowler after controversial move. Picture: Liam Kidston

Court action

It may seem obvious, but the Queensland Supreme Court will soon hear a case that turns on a cautionary tale for the schoolyard, the divorce courts and, most especially, the corporate world: always put agreements in writing.

Set down for hearings in November, Melbourne-based fund manager Stephen Sedgman is being sued by a former director of his Apollo Global Equity Fund for allegedly refusing to pay $200,000 that was owed for the purchase of additional shares in the company.

Sedgman, a co-founder of Fullbridge Capital and a managing director of Pilgrim Private, is defending the allegations, which he denies. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Brought by Myles Barton Smith, formerly of Wilson HTM, the suit alleges that Sedgman offered to pay him $200,000 for 45 per cent of his Apollo shares during a conversation said to have occurred in November 2018.

By then the fund had grown to a healthy size with more than $20m under management, most of which had allegedly been ­secured by Smith, whose role was to promote the company and solicit investors. By October 2019 the fund had roughly $28m under management.

Sedgman, Apollo’s investment manager, allegedly told Smith they would “make a heap” from the growing fund and claimed that Fullbridge Capital’s chairman, Iain Mason, was interested in joining in an undisclosed capacity.

Given the upside potential, Sedgman sought to acquire more shares, which Smith agreed to sell. A draft agreement reflected the rebalanced stakes, which saw Sedgman’s entity – Henclo – own 55 per cent of Apollo, while Smith’s vehicle – Watusi Investments – had a 45 per cent holding.

No problems thus far, except the draft agreement said nothing of the $200,000 allegedly promised for the transaction. Sedgman disputes that any offer was made to buy the shares, or that Smith even agreed to sell them. What’s known, however, is that the shares were indeed transferred.

When concerns about the money were allegedly raised with Sedgman’s lawyer, James Dickson, a partner at Piper Alderman, Smith was told not to be overly alarmed given his longstanding relationship with Sedgman, who he described in court documents as a “mentor and father figure”.

“Dickson said that he would normally tell his clients to have this sort of information included in a shareholders’ agreement, but that ‘it is Stephen, as if he’s not going to pay’,” Smith’s statement of claim notes.

Well, we all know how this tale allegedly goes. The money was never paid and, when Smith lawyered up and demanded no further contact with Sedgman, in September 2019, he was issued with a default notice and accused of breaching Apollo’s shareholders’ agreement.

That triggered his removal as an Apollo director and saw his shares acquired for “nil consideration”, per a purchase option granted to Sedgman, written into the agreement.

The boutique fund has since been wound down with a value of zero and was renamed Erudition Global Focus Fund last year. We’re naturally eager to hear what Dickson says about the $200,000, and his conversation with Smith, if he is called to the witness stand.

Strange brew

YBF’s co-founder Darcy Naunton was absent in 2019 as varying shades of fiasco engulfed the fintech incubator, which is being picked apart by liquidators for the $5.6m still owing to creditors.

Naunton was off at the time on a months-long expedition across Spanish and Latin America, including to the Amazonian jungle, where he enjoyed a kaleidoscopic experience dabbling with psychotropic brews at an Ayahuasca retreat. We know because he earnestly chronicled the bulk of the experience.

“We would bath(e) in the river and under waterfalls, walk through (the) jungle trying different jungle medicines and talk to the shaman about our experience from the night before,” Naunton wrote, with an accompanying picture of someone putting liquid from a leaf into his eye, the purpose unspecified.

Nothing wrong with a holiday, of course, but we question whether the effects of these shamanic potions ever wore off, given Naunton’s puzzling defence of YBF’s former CEO, Farley Blackman, in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday – the same day Margin Call revealed further dysfunction that led up to the company’s collapse.

“I could not be happier that the board was able to bring in Farley Blackman as group CEO,” wrote Naunton, now a partner at Black Nova Venture Capital. “He is a courageous, decisive, and inclusive leader, who was able to quickly fix the structural, cultural and commercial issues that were a legacy of the early days of the business.”

An odd take given that no fewer than seven letters were written to the YBF board citing concerns with the business’s culture and financial health, among other matters, under Blackman’s stewardship.

And there remains the questionable movement of YBF’s assets, IP and subsidiaries to a new company – YBF Holdings – as its revenue began to evaporate. Naunton and Blackman, we note, were the appointed directors of that new little experiment.