Ex-Collingwood president Eddie McGuire links with Peter Gordon and David Evans
What is better than one former AFL club president? No fewer than three!
Such is the case for recently departed Collingwood president and media mogul Eddie McGuire, who has linked up with two fellow Melbourne personalities uniquely qualified to understand his perspective in his latest venture.
None other than immediate past president of the Western Bulldogs Peter Gordon, along with good mate and former Essendon chairman David Evans, who resigned from the Bombers in the wake of the anti-doping crisis in 2013.
In contrast to McGuire’s headline-grabbing exit from the board after the release of the Respect Matters report earlier in February, Gordon’s exit was markedly less controversial just months earlier in December.
At the time, he said simply that it was “a good time for me to move on”, handing the presidency to his deputy, Kylie Watson-Wheeler.
The three past presidents, whose collective club board experience is more than 40 years, have linked up in a new mystery venture dubbed The Box 392 — evidently a name like “ex-presidents club” just didn’t have the same ring to it.
Documents registered with ASIC on March 18, coincidentally the first day of the 2021 AFL season, give little insight into the goings-on of the crew, but do list their principal place of business as the MCG, suggesting the venture could be a rather formal means to purchase a corporate box.
Each are equal shareholders in the entity — Evans, founder of Evans and Partners (of which McGuire was for a time an advisory board member), through his family trust Utupa, McGuire through Seventy Second Macorp Nominees and Gordon through his CLF Nominees.
Between them, they have quite the collective resume, with expertise across the legal, media and funds management spheres — not to mention contacts spanning the entirety of the footy-mad state.
Only two weekends ago McGuire was spotted with Gordon at a meeting of their two former clubs, reports at the time noting that the lifelong Pies fan had opted to give the club some “clean air” after his departure, giving ample space to his recently announced replacement, Mark Korda.
But with all this extra time on his hands, McGuire’s also set up another new entity, Tango Productions, based out of his Jam TV offices on Toorak Road, with business partner Cos Cardone (who sits on David Koch’s board at Port Adelaide).
Even as he steps back from official board duties, his links with the code run deep — McGuire’s production company is behind the recent documentary series Making Their Mark, which made its debut on Amazon Prime last month, and for which the rival NRL and its head Peter V’landys are already plotting their own similar series.
McGuire’s links are evidently more than happy to extend across clubs, but whether he’ll share his expertise cross-code is a whole different ball game.
Bank balances rev up
As car dealer Peter Warren Automotive revs up for its ASX debut on Tuesday, there’s more than a few punters cheering on the company from the sidelines.
The group, led by Peter Warren’s son Paul Warren, joins the bourse after a $260m IPO, with shares offered at $2.90 a piece, and it is the founding Warren family that have the most to gain.
First and foremost, the Warrens net $24m in cold hard cash as part of the sale of the Warwick Farm headquarters in Sydney’s west, complete with replica Sydney Harbour Bridge, to the newly listed company, on top of any paper increase to their personal wealth if the float is well received.
The family holds roughly 35 per cent of the open float post-listing, escrowed for 24 months, along with the 9.4 per cent held by private equiteer Quadrant, and just over 4 per cent from James Frizelle’s fellow car dealer Automotive Group, also the part-owner of the Gold Coast Titans.
Within the group’s top brass, chief Mark Weaver is set to reap close to 100,000 performance rights for his part in the offer, along with just over 90,000 rights for chief financial officer Bernard Friend.
Both incentives are free to exercise for both execs, conditional only that they remain employed by a group company until the end of the year and that they “meet expectations”.
Amid the top shareholders is a surprise entry in Corporate Travel boss Jamie Pherous, who scrapes in to the top 20 list with a holding worth just under half a million bucks at the IPO price. After a rollercoaster year for his CTM, it’s any wonder he’s seeking to diversify.
Hooper on the hop
It seems retention bonuses weren’t enough to keep Sigma Healthcare chief Mark Hooper in the job after 11 years, the boss plotting his exit just months after he received his latest bonus payments.
As Margin Call was quick to point out earlier this month, Hooper’s part in the group’s return to profit was awarded generously, not least with two separate one-off awards attributed to the “unique business circumstances” of the year previous.
A cash retention award of $661,446 was granted to Hooper at the end of the year to January 31, along with a top-up of performance rights under the group’s Project Pivot Business Transformation Plan.
Just last month, the chief converted more than 590,000 of his performance rights to ordinary shares, which at a fair value of 47c were already in profit upon vesting. Not bad.
That leaves a balance of 1.4 million rights at 30c a pop, exercisable from February 2022 largely at the board and people committee chair Christine Bartlett’s discretion.
That doesn’t even count the 15.64 million ordinary shares he has accrued during his tenure, worth roughly $10.62m at Monday’s closing price of 68c.
Almost a million for each year he’s spent with the company doesn’t seem like a bad parting gift at all.
Meeting with Clive
There are countless celebratory activities that one might choose to mark the end of Mark McGowan’ssnap three-day lockdown in Perth — but meeting outspoken businessman Clive Palmer in court certainly doesn’t even make the shortlist.
Thankfully that burden is the Western Australia Premier’s and his legal solicitor Carmel Galati’s alone — with a case management hearing set for Tuesday afternoon.
The two men have been quarrelling in the Federal Court since August last year, locked in a defamation suit and cross-claim relating to what Palmer describes as “grossly defamatory” statements by McGowan.
While there’s unlikely to be any fireworks at the mostly procedural matter conducted from a courtroom in Darwin, with two of the most unpredictable personalities in the country it could be anyone’s guess.
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