Feeding Nomad diners the little white lies; Pratt books in at pal Donald’s place
The troubled Nomad Group formally rebranded itself Edition Hospitality last week, drawing a line (or attempting to draw a line) beneath the antics of its execrable co-owner, Alan Yazbek, and what had previously been a successful, even beloved, restaurant business.
In the meantime, Yazbek’s wife Rebecca has gone from making grovelling public apologies to personally beseeching former patrons to consider a return to Nomad and its tanking venues across Sydney and Melbourne.
Aggrieved diners cut off the restaurants when her husband attended a pro-Palestine rally and brandished a Nazi swastika on a placard styled as the Israeli flag, behaviour that has never been known to improve the profitability of any business.
He pleaded guilty to a police charge over the October incident and is now ticking every conceivable check-box to try pay down his rehabilitative debts.
This would include a hard detour overseas for an obligatory stint at an ashram in India, a detail which Nomad Group actually publicised in a press release earlier this month, as though visions of Yazbek sitting cross-legged in the lotus position would somehow draw back the crowds to their eateries.
Was this bizarre piece of information inserted on the advice of Nomad’s crisis managers at Wilkinson Butler? Imagine actually paying by the hour for this sort of hopeless counsel.
On Monday, Rebecca attended to the task of writing to former clients, telling one of them that much work was under way to revive the brand and return it to good health.
“Taking charge now as sole owner, I look forward to returning to what we do best,” Yazbek wrote in an email obtained by this column. “My team and I hope with time, (sic) you may consider dining in my restaurants again.”
But hold up – sole owner? That didn’t sit comfortably with the recipient, who pressed Yazbek on whether her husband remained a shareholder in the business, a factoid we revealed here last month.
Yazbek responded by saying her financial adviser, Anthony Bell, was “looking at options for me to sell his (Alan’s) shares”, which undercut her own claim to being the sole owner of the business, and which she then clarified.
“So I will be the sole owner or will relinquish part of the ownership of my company to a new shareholder,” she said. “Until the details can be worked through, he is no longer a director and will not be a shareholder as soon as practicable.”
Ah, but that’s not quite correct either! Documents on file with the corporate regulator show Alan Yazbek is still a director of Edition Hospitality – as Nomad has come to call itself – and remains its company secretary.
We’ll grant that Yazbek is in the process of restructuring the business, as she says; but telling people it’s already happened, when it hasn’t, won’t exactly return this dying empire to hitherto-unimaginable riches.
The only adjustments in Nomad’s recent filings related to the aforementioned name-change and a re-registering of its business address to Bell’s accounting firm, Bell Partners. Surely it cannot take so long to submit one more form removing her husband as a director?
Yazbek also suggested some unexpected rehabilitation was being undertaken by her husband. “He is meeting with our friend’s rabbi weekly now and is hoping to meet with Jewish associations and will continue to try and meet with the Jewish community,” she said.
Doesn’t sound like these organisations are in any rush to help him save his bacon, if you get what we mean.
And the name of the rabbi for us to verify this detail? A spokesman wasn’t able to provide it. YB
Chummy with Trump
Packaging billionaire Anthony Pratt has wasted no time in moving to curry favour with Donald Trump after the US election, booking the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort for a lavish dinner to “celebrate America’s food industry”.
On top of heaving the cost of dinner for about 700 people in the Trump club’s direction, Pratt has hired a couple of the incoming president’s favourites as entertainment for the assembled guests – mostly major US customers for Visy’s products, Margin Call hears.
They include Trump’s former agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue – the “designated survivor” sent into hiding in 2018 in case catastrophe hit The Donald’s first State of the Union address and everyone else in succession was killed.
Performing will be country and western singer Lee Greenwood, a regular at Trump campaign rallies and best known for penning “God Bless the USA”.
And more recently for promoting sales of the “God Bless the USA Bible” with Trump. Which neither man wrote, but which also includes copies of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence – both translated from the original Aramaic, and presumably slipped in between the Book of Jude (the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes) and Revelations.
Pratt has moved to the US permanently after winning a green card, but wasn’t at Mar-a-Lago on election night last week – unlike Gina Rinehart and former Liberal Party veep Teena McQueen.
But he is no stranger to the resort, having long been a member of the club, which now costs an extraordinary $US1m to join after Trump hiked fees in August. Membership is said to have cost about $US200,000 at the start of Trump’s first Presidency in 2017.
It is also where Trump allegedly shared nuclear submarine secrets with the billionaire after leaving office in 2020 – famously describing Pratt as a “a red-haired weirdo from Australia” when denying the allegations on social media.
Pratt was at some risk of being called as one of the starring witnesses in Trump’s trial over his loose attitude to official secrets at Mar-a-Lago, where the former US president allegedly stored dozens of boxes of classified documents after leaving office. But that trial was indefinitely delayed by a Florida judge in May and now looks increasingly unlikely to ever go ahead after his return to the White House, removing any possible embarrassment.
God Bless America, indeed. NE
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.