‘Extraordinary’ Crown Resorts board demands add to Jane Halton’s busy schedule

Crown resorts director Jane Halton. Picture: Nikki Short

Crown chair Helen Coonan hasn’t yet fronted the latest royal commission, but we’re already garnering several insights on her leadership style and just how much her workhorse attitude is rubbing off on her fellow boardmates.

Take former senior public servant Jane Halton who, along with her electric blue-rimmed glasses, has become quite the fixture of the nation’s Covid commentary of late.

Only hours before taking the stand at Ray Finkelstein’s commission on Wednesday, there she was in the chilly outdoors of Canberra, telling Nine breakfast show host Karl Stefanovic any easing of Greater Sydney’s stay-at-home orders wasn’t likely.

Illustration: Rod Clement

Good thing there’s nothing like that holding her or husband and former ABS statistician Trevor Sutton back in the nation’s capital.

The subject matter was decidedly more detailed come her turn in the (virtual) stand at the public hearing, where she shared with counsel assisting just how “extraordinary” the demands of the Crown boards were given the many committees and only few members.

Halton herself is chair of Crown’s Sydney entity, chair of the risk committee and member of the audit and corporate governance, the people and remuneration, the responsible gaming and safety and sustainability committees.

Extraordinary indeed but it’s not even considering the former health department secretary’s life outside of Crown which, since the pandemic, has ramped up considerably.

Only months ago Halton was rattling a $3.5bn tin alongside billionaire Melinda Gates at the launch of the investment case for the Centre of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which she chairs alongside the world’s best health brains in a recently renewed five-year tenure.

The organisation, charged with mitigating the effect of Covid-19, any future pandemics and charting a global vaccine response certainly makes Crown’s purpose to “together create memorable experience” seem rather inadequate.

On matters of health, Halton is also a management adviser to Scott Morrison and his cabinet in a $15,000-a-month contract to December, a follow-on from her time on the commonwealth Covid-19 commission.

If that wasn’t enough there’s the chairmanship at government cloud services group Vault Cloud or the Council on the Ageing Australia, board role at ANZ, external directorship at Clayton Utz and adjunct professorship at both Canberra Uni and USyd.

All the while, as drawn out by counsel assisting Penny Neskovcin on Wednesday, there’s some glaring instances of her committee’s failure to follow up on key issues flagged even before the earlier Bergin inquiry.

“There was a vast amount going on at the inquiry in regards to the processes and their robustness,” Halton told the commission of a Deloitte report into the group’s culture in 2018.

“Should I have seen that and remembered that and asked about it weeks afterwards? Yes I should have.”

Hard to blame her really. How does she have the time?

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Enough on plate

Any conversation on Crown board members’ many hats is not complete without a mention of director Toni Korsanos, who only in the past week was celebrating some rather momentous developments in her US venture.

Recall that Crown is not Korsanos’s only gambling pursuit. She is also a key player in Nasdaq-listed poker machine maker Scientific Games chaired by her former Aristocrat colleague Jamie O’Dell that was recently weighing up an Australian listing.

Antonia Korsanos. Picture: AAP

Turns out the company, also backed by Will Vicars and his partner Mike Messara, are taking a different approach, telling investors on June 29 the company was intending to divest its lottery and sports betting businesses, potentially via IPO, SPAC or sale as advised by Macquarie and Oakvale Capital.

That’s all just days before local outfit Tabcorp and its chairman Steven Gregg identified a similar strategy closer to home.

Beaming into the commission from Crown’s Barangaroo tower in Sydney on Wednesday, there was another of the director’s roles that was cause for Ray Finkelstein’s concern, however – her role as a director on Ellerstone’s Jaade private assets fund.

It was Ellerstone, of course, that was set up by the Packer family in 2005, though Korsanos was quick to quell any concerns of James Packer’s links to the fund he now only has a small passive stake in.

“I deal with the principals of Ellerston Capital, led by Ashok Jacob,” she told Finkelstein, an answer he was well prepared for.

“ … Who has worked with Packer for many years,” the Fink was quick to fire back.

“I don’t have any involvement with Packer family investments,” came the reply.

Crown proving to be enough of a hassle as it is.

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Much to ponder

Tough week at the office, to say the least, for relatively new Crown Melbourne boss Xavier Walsh.

Evidence to the Finkelstein royal commission, including from Walsh himself on Monday, will be giving new Crown Resorts chief Steve McCann plenty to ponder when it comes to the ongoing tenure of Walsh, an almost 10-year Crown veteran.

The Bergin inquiry, of course, brought on the demise of a multitude of Crown directors, along with Crown execs including CEO Ken Barton, chief legal officer Joshua Preston and Australian resorts head Barry Felstead.

Crown Melbourne CEO Xavier Walsh, second from left. Picture: AAP

Now the actions of Walsh concerning disclosures around the underpayment of gaming tax to the Victorian government are being thrust into the spotlight and dissected by Finkelstein’s various counsel assisting.

On Wednesday it was non-exec Crown director Jane Halton’s turn to throw shadow on Walsh, 55, and his adherence to Crown executive chair Coonan’s fresh commitment to transparency and openness.

Fellow director Toni Korsanos then added her doubts about Walsh to the mix.

Halton was wondering aloud whether Walsh was the right man for the job running the Melbourne facility, given he failed to fully reveal the underpayment issue to her, and that she was “sceptical” of him in the key role.

“I am concerned, that is absolutely correct,” also ANZ director Halton told the Victorian commission, adding that McCann would make an assessment of the Crown management team going forward.

“There are questions here, very definitely,” she said.

Walsh, who was elevated to be CEO of Crown Melbourne in February, worked from 2008 for Crown on secondment as variously CFO and COO of the Cannery Resorts operations in the US. He returned to Australia in 2013.

It was of course the 2007, $US1.75bn Cannery deal, or what turned out to be the non-deal, that plunged Crown in a multimillion-dollar tax dispute with the ATO that was only settled in October 2019 for an undisclosed sum. Seen one tax fight, seen ’em all.

Jane Halton

Toni Korsanos

Xavier Walsh