Sydney radio broadcaster Ben Fordham has made a lofty prediction that Labor Premier Chris Minns might become one of the longest-serving leaders in NSW history – or so he privately told crestfallen Nationals MPs in a media briefing and Q&A session held last week.
Fordham stopped by NSW parliament on Friday at the request of MP Dugald Saunders; he and Fordham used to work together at radio station 2UE during the 1990s, when Saunders was a budding reporter.
There was a dab of media training, and Fordham gave a spiel on his personal bio. The whole thing lasted about an hour. During the questions someone wanted to know when the Minns honeymoon period would finally end. “I hate to break it to you,” Fordham said, going on to suggest the Labor leader could have the potential to outlast some of the state’s most enduring political methuselahs – Bob Carr, who made it to just shy of 10 years and four months; Neville Wran, a close second, at 10 years, one month and 20 days.
It’s a prophecy that certainly jars with Minns’ magnetism for crisis, namely that war with union leaders, the loss of cabinet minister Tim Crakanthorp, and the havoc caused by another minister, Jo Haylen, over this job appointment palaver engulfing her at the moment. None of it speaks to longevity.
But this is also the same Ben Fordham who once wagered that Kevin Rudd wouldn’t win the 2007 election. In fact, so confident was Fordham in this view that he actually took a $20 bet with the Rudd-bot on that very outcome. History dictates the result, of course, and Fordham to his credit paid up in full.
If Minns has one thing going for him, it’s that there’s almost nobody in the lower house who could conceivably replace him in a pinch. But that’s the lower house, the shallow end of the talent pool.
The other place, as it’s known, is another story altogether.
Bye bye Bawa
So much fanfare out of Property Exchange Australia and its vaunted expansion into Britain over the past two years. Now we hear its UK chief executive, James Bawa, has quietly walked out in a most muted exit. What gives?
Bawa was hired in 2021 to push the e-conveyancing company into the UK market, resulting in a massive plunge on a local HQ, staff hiring, and the purchase of remortgage processing firm Optima Legal last year. For some reason,
PEXA group MD Glenn King was always pumped up in these announcements but there was nary a word on Bawa, the missing CEO. This while the company was undertaking its biggest expansion to date.
Maybe it’s incidental, but on Friday PEXA released its financial results to the market, noting a 6 per cent cut to revenue and a $21.8m profit loss. No mention, again, of Bawa’s departure in the annual report or in the company’s presentation – until a shrewd analyst put the question to King and CFO Scott Butterworth.
Until that point, the only hint that Bawa had left the business were the adjustments to the company website, which now list Krystle Kocik and Simon Wright as PEXA’s acting UK chiefs.
No market announcement? No press release? Apparently no need, because Bawa wasn’t technically “key management personnel”. PEXA decided to quietly communicate the news a few weeks back to its staff and its British customers.
A PEXA spokesman told Margin Call that Bawa had been a “strong leader over the three years” and that he’d decided to “take this opportunity to pursue other endeavours”, his tenure ending at the close of August.
“An external search is under way to fill the role of the new UK country head,” the official said.
Westpac pursuit
Giovanni Tesoriero’s house in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn has gone on the market for a ballpark sale price of $9.25m.
Does that name ring a bell? Tesoriero is the father of Vincent Tesoriero, named as a co-conspirator in a $500m fraud concerning his time as a director of Forum Finance. Westpac has been suing the company, and others, in a painfully long stretch of litigation still playing out in the Federal Court.
In a recent development, Vincent’s dad agreed to a confidential settlement of some $750,000 with Westpac, which seems to pay back some money he owed and, more importantly, effectively cuts him out of further hearings and probing on the witness stand.
One problem – he agreed, but allegedly didn’t pay, and Westpac’s now dragged him back to court claiming a shortage of funds, doing so in a late filing.
Margin Call’s only question is whether the sale of the house is what’s holding up the transaction. The double block, purchased in May 2020 for $7.9m, was put on the market by the first mortgage holders. Meanwhile, a judgment in the Forum Finance case itself is expected shortly. We hope.
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