Ex-PwC COO Rick Crethar pops up at Victor Dominello’s ServiceGen
The sudden departure of PwC’s Rick Crethar in February didn’t receive much press, nor a hint of any fawning farewells on vanity-platform LinkedIn. Kind of odd for a stalwart partner who loyally served as the company’s chief risk officer for more than a decade.
Crethar has since picked up work as a strategic adviser to ServiceGen, the newly announced consultancy of Victor Dominello and Damon Rees – and theirs is quite a partnership.
Dominello, you may recall, invented his own portfolio in the NSW government with the blessing of premier Gladys Berejiklian, disappearing with a set of coloured pencils and re-emerging as the minister for digital government.
Rees, a co-founder of ServiceGen (not that it says so anywhere on the website!), was the chief executive of Dominello’s beloved baby in government, Service NSW.
Clearly, Dominello was the smartest guy in the room. He invented a scandal-less portfolio that confounded everyone as to its purpose, busied himself for years cultivating industry contacts, and has now hired his favourite bureaucrat to run a firm that will leverage these relationships and surely make squillions.
What next, Andrew Constance announcing a train building venture with Howard Collins? A RAT-supply business courtesy of Brad Hazzard and Kerry Chant? Of course not, she couldn’t stand working with him.
But back to Crethar. His departure from PwC is still wondered about in the Barangaroo tower, only because it followed a complaint about his conduct that was lodged by a colleague.
The allegation, Margin Call understands, resulted in an investigation over the Christmas and New Year period, the summer shutdown dragging it right out.
There’s no suggestion that Crethar departed as a result of that matter, and the outcome wasn’t made clear to Margin Call.
What’s undisputed, however, is that Crethar retired, with a spokesman for him telling us that he was unable to comment on the specifics of his decision, “other than to say that he was very pleased with the agreed terms”.
PwC was contacted, too, but didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Sheldon shareholding
Not content with his flaying of Alan Joyce at a Senate estimates hearing three weeks ago, Tony Sheldon has made a surprise $550 outlay to attempt some further man-skinning at Qantas’s AGM in November – his targets being Richard Goyder and newly appointed CEO Vanessa Hudson.
Buying on Monday while the share price was still suffering from dropsy, Sheldon scooped up nearly 100 shares in the airline, not quite enough to call a boardroom spill but a holding that gives him the right to grab a microphone when shareholders meet on November 3.
That’s his explanation for the purchase.
“I look forward to seeing Ms Hudson – and Mr Goyder if he’s still refused to take responsibility for his illegal sacking of 1700 people by then,” Sheldon told Margin Call, referring to this week’s High Court victory by Qantas’s sacked ground-handling staff.
No love lost, of course, between Sheldon and Joyce. Their beef goes back to the days of yore, in 2010, a time when Sheldon rocked a set of mutton chops and led the Transport Workers Union in its industrial action against the airline, resulting in Joyce’s sensational grounding of the airline’s entire fleet.
“Top of the agenda will be how the board plans to claw back Mr Joyce’s $24m pay cheque,” Sheldon said.
“I’ll also be curious whether the board plans to take any director fees in a year in which they’ve been found guilty of the biggest illegal sacking in Australian history and been accused of one of the biggest consumer rip-offs in Australian history.”
All well and good, yes, but it’s not like Sheldon is bereft of a platform to ask these questions through the parliament, or through his Senate committee work. He’s on the committee that’s just been set up to examine the Qatar matter, too, where he’ll already be able to ask his questions of Qantas – under compulsion, no less.
It’s a gambit that reminds us of Teal independent Kylea Tink and her attempt to forge similar levels of shareholder activism. Having campaigned assiduously for action on climate change, Tink was outed by Margin Call as a shareholder in Beach Energy and Viva Energy, and claimed to have invested in order to “better understand the entities”, as though their annual reports were too impenetrable to understand.
We’ll be able to test Sheldon’s commitment to this venture when he decides to sell his Qantas stock. Will there be a donation of any capital gains?
Medical skirmish gets pulses racing
Most lawyers will tell you their work doesn’t save lives, but a case starting on Monday could prove the exception.
‘The scapegoating of business has to stop’: literal alarm at corporate Oscars
Seats were in short supply at business’s equivalent of the Oscars, but the speeches didn’t miss and at least one big name couldn’t wait to hot-foot it out of there before the dessert plates were even cleared.