Bill Wavish’s Endeavour pitch CV; Sayers the wildcard in PwC probe

Wavish’s summary of his CV, provided to Endeavour shareholders in the Notice of Annual General Meeting, contains all of the hits and very few of the misses. Picture: Gregg Porteous

Surely we’ve heard enough about billionaire Bruce Mathieson’s campaign to put another director on the board of Endeavour Group. This is already getting older than the ice bucket challenge, but it’s been amusing to watch Mathieson smash up the existing directors for “blowing away” money, even though his own son is one of them!

Mathieson nominee Bill Wavish is also a bit of a loose unit, misspelling Endeavour in the first line of his announcement for the board last week. Details, mate.

Similarly slack was Wavish’s summary of his CV, provided to Endeavour shareholders in the Notice of Annual General Meeting. It contains all of the hits and very few of the misses.

So, no mention of his time as MD at Chase Corporation (Australia), or that he quit the business when it lost $100m off the value of its assets in the sharemarket crash of ’87.

Not a word about his executive chairmanship of Housewares International between 2004 and 2006.

These days known as Breville Group, its share price tanked during those years but strangely ticked back up after Wavish departed, beginning a J-curve of incredible growth that’s continued over the next 15 years.

And nothing about his time as a director of “Mini Macquarie” Babcock & Brown Capital between 2004 and 2008, around which time the board approved the acquisition of Golden Pages, the Israeli equivalent of what we used to call the Yellow Pages, a service made obsolete by Google. And we all know what happened to Babs, in the end.

Sure, in a career as long as Wavish’s, who could expect him to list every single affiliation he’s ever held?

We can all grant him that, and it’s an argument that might have worked in his favour, except he somehow found room to mention his directorship of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs, a museum in the Queensland outback.

Get ready

It’s shaping up to be quite a spectacle in Canberra next Thursday, with a Senate inquiry to finally hear from PwC and its local chief Kevin Burrowes, but also from hotly anticipated witness Luke Sayers, the rhino-skinned former CEO of PwC who’s been AWOL these past few months.

But one individual who everyone is practically dying to interrogate is that other PwC chief executive, Tom Seymour, who resigned at the height of the scandal in May. Seymour won’t be fronting the Senate committee anytime soon, even though a good chunk of PwC’s alleged impropriety occurred on his watch.

A consequence of the ongoing Australian Federal Police investigation into the firm? Better to say less, at this point.

PwC Australia boss Kevin Burrowes.

Tragic and perhaps even astonishing is that the Senate bungled its moment to call PwC’s global chair Bob Moritz to Canberra, a damn shame given that he’s been in the country hosting drinkie-poos and wooing clients for more than a week. A dreadfully late invitation was flicked off to Moritz on Friday afternoon, quite literally as he was ­almost wheels up at the airport. Naturally, he declined it.

Sayers will be the wildcard to watch during the proceedings. Having spent a chunk of the year holed up in Italy, he’s remained sphinx-like on the topic of PwC and, despite innumerable public appearances, has made almost no remarks on the matter.

The exception, of course, was a statement of plausible deniability issued in August, in which he insisted that he couldn’t recall the Australian Taxation Office asking him to “personally review” internal emails relating to conduct of the firm’s tax division and the alleged breaches of government confidentiality.

Luke Sayers will the wildcard to watch. Picture: Michael Klein

In his words: “I did not personally review the tens of thousands of documents and emails which PwC provided to the ATO as part of these processes, nor do I recall that being suggested to me by the ATO.”

Whether anyone should accept that explanation is another matter, and we know Senator Deborah O’Neill is unlikely to do so, having previously told the committee “ethics were jettisoned” under Sayers and there was “no possibility” he was unaware of the behaviour.

Yet to be made clear, too, is whether representatives from PwC spin-off Scyne will show their faces, although Margin Call understands they’ve been called, again. And good timing, given the firm has only just been admitted to a government tender panel, putting paid to the suggestion it’s not operational as a business yet and therefore should be excused from giving evidence. That old chestnut can only go so far, right?

Meanwhile, it’s already been noted that Deloitte CEO Adam Powick was too busy hiding out in France to accept his second invitation to appear before the committee last month. No doubt the man preferred to lay low abroad than be chewed up and spat out like a bad oyster in front of everyone a second time.

But what was so urgent in France? Margin Call never quite got to the bottom of whether he simply snubbed the committee to watch the Rugby World Cup. Apparently there was no time for the Senate but plenty of time to disseminate a video message to staff, enjoining them all to support the upcoming voice referendum, and doing so while wearing a Wallabies jersey.

Subtle, eh? But why begrudge the guy for picking up a souvenir.