Elliott gang drop in for stickybeak with BHP backers

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Lieutenants from New York billionaire Paul Singer’s hedge fund Elliott Partners are back in Australia. Should new BHP chairman Ken MacKenzie be worried?

Margin Call understands the activist Elliott crew are Down Under to meet fellow investors in the global miner.

That provides a good forum for Elliott to take a bit of credit for recent about-faces at the Big Australian, most notably the exit of blink-and-you-missed-him BHP director Grant King and MacKenzie’s humbling announcement that the global miner was calling time on its $US40 billion shale adventure in the US.

MacKenzie, a former Amcor managing director whose total independent director experience consists of a year with BHP, will hope Elliott isn’t concocting still more trouble to coincide with his first chairmanship of a Big Australian AGM.

That London event is now only a month away.

Staying with BHP board members, Lindsay Maxsted, one of the directors MacKenzie beat to the top job, was along at an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch in Melbourne yesterday starring BHP’s Australian mining chief Mike Henry.

Maxsted even asked a question from the floor on China, which he noted was very important to the future of all Australian businesses.

Assuming there’s been no breakdown in board-executive communications at the Big Australian, you’d expect Maxsted to be well versed on Henry’s China view.

It seems the question was for the benefit of any of the audience not as glued to the machinations of electricity politics as the gathered journalists, who were driving most of the questioning.

For the record, Henry remains positive on resources demand out of China.

Onwards, upwards

Reserve Bank director Kathryn Fagg’s triumphant Chief Executive Women relocated their corporate star-studded annual dinner last night to Sydney’s International Convention Centre after outgrowing its former home in the ballroom of the Westin Hotel.

A 1300-strong crowd helped raise more than $1 million to help fund CEW’s extensive international scholarship program, in an evening organised and hosted by News Corp digital boss Nicole Sheffield.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was along, as was first lady Lucy Turnbull, director of persecuted energy company AGL Belinda Hutchinson, retiring Sydney Airport boss Kerrie Mather, Woolies director and APRA CBA panel member Jillian Broadbent, Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott and member for Barton Linda Burney.

The evening’s keynote speaker was Aboriginal and Torres Islander social justice commissioner June Oscar and major sponsors included King & Wood Mallesons, Qantas, Telstra, ANZ, BHP, KPMG and QBE.

Even some blokes came along, including Macquarie boss Nicholas Moore, his chairman Peter Warne, Westpac chief Brian Hartzer, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, CSIRO chairman and former Telstra boss David Thodey, NAB glamour recruit Mike Baird and new QBE head Pat Regan.

Birthday boys

Fairfax boss Greg Hywood and his chairman Nick Falloon have more than just a boardroom in common.

The media execs also share a birthday, which next falls on Tuesday.

In something of a role reversal, Hywood is the elder of the pair, turning 63 next week, while Falloon is warming up to celebrate his milestone 60th on September 26.

In the lead-up to festivities, the pair are expected to today unveil the scheme document for the spin-off of the Fairfax Media property business Domain, which will be led by the entrepreneurial Antony “The Cat” Catalano.

For the time being, Catalano’s Domain staff are believed to be employed by Hywood’s Fairfax Digital Australia & New Zealand Pty Ltd vehicle, which in a former incarnation was the media group’s ill-fated F2.

Media veterans will remember it as former Fairfax boss Fred Hilmer’s much-ridiculed digital division in the early 2000s, which was the last time Fairfax management got excited about a spin-off.

Today’s Domain doco will reveal the structure of this latest hive-off, which will be voted on at the Fairfax annual meeting in early November, ahead of a planned listing that month.

Rose to Rio’s rescue

Jean Sebastien-Jacques’ under siege Rio Tinto corporate affairs team has a new senior recruit.

Margin Call understands Jonathan Rose will soon join Team JS from his current gig as head of media and corporate communications at Richard Bowden’s Bupa Australia and New Zealand.

Rose, who in his life before healthcare ran communications at James Sutherland’s Cricket Australia, will head the global miner’s Melbourne-based media team.

To go by Rio’s handling of outgoing CFO Chris Lynch’s departure (“bollocks” one day, gospel the next), they could use an experienced hand.

Fittingly, Rose has been around the block a few times. He’s also worked in comms at Telstra, NAB, Holden and BHP, where he had a stint helping with the controversial Beijing Olympic Games project.

At Rio, Rose will be working for Brad Haynes, the head of corporate affairs for Asia who joined the giant in January.

Haynes, who joined Rio from Chevron and is a former staffer of foreign minister in the Howard government Alexander Downer, has held political ambitions of his own.

At one time he was eyeing off the WA seat of Pearce, now held by Christian Porter.

Lovett joins Besens

Highly regarded former Equity Trustees head of philanthropy Tabitha Lovett has been appointed CEO of the deeply private Besen Family Foundation.

She replaces the billionaire family foundation’s first external boss, former Myer Family Company executive Louise Doyle, who spent two years with the Besens before exiting last month to go overseas.

Doyle had replaced long-serving boss Debbie Dadon, the daughter of shopping centre magnates Mark and Eva Besen. Dadon moved into the chairwoman’s role.

Lovett had been running her own shop called Lovett Philanthropy since leaving Equity Trustees in March before being tapped by the Besen billionaires.

We wonder if one of the perks of her new job might be the odd trip from the Besens’ Cremorne head office in inner city Melbourne to sunny Byron Bay?

The Besens are investors in a $100 million solar income fund that is part of the fellow billionaire Liberman family-backed Impact Investment Group.

Impact, which also has a range of property investments, this week snapped up the Beach Hotel in Byron Bay from Max Twigg for $70 million in the biggest pub deal of the year.

Elsewhere in the family, Danielle and Daniel Besen have recently settled on the record $26.25 million sale of their never-lived-in Towers Road, Toorak home to infrastructure exec Phil Dreaver, who runs Netflow.