From west to east: ASIC’s Joe Longo leaves Claremont for Melbourne

Incoming top corporate cop Joe Longo will need to bring a coat when he enacts his relocation from sunny Perth to Melbourne to take over the chairmanship of the Australian Security & Investments Commission from the start of next month.

The lawyer’s controversial predecessor, James Shipton, finishes up at the corporate watchdog next Friday and, Margin Call hears, on Thursday was in the commission’s Sydney office conducting business as usual towards his final exit in a few days.

Word is that Longo, who has in recent years been a partner specialising in global banking and financial regulation at prestige law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, is moving his life from home in the Perth suburb of Claremont along with property in the Margaret River region to the Victorian capital.

The change in temperature will be profound.

There will be no official crossover between the old and new guard, but Longo, 61, we hear has in recent weeks been meeting up with key members of his executive so that he can hit the ground running next month.

Longo’s (right) previous stint at ASIC in the 1990s, with then Chairman Alan Cameron.

It’s been a turbulent 10 months or so for Shipton, who stood aside last October pending an inquiry into the chair’s personal tax advice expenses, which ASIC had paid. The investigation cleared Shipton of any wrongdoing, but he is leaving anyway, with no indication yet of what his next move will be.

He is still believed to be deliberating whether to say anything publicly between now and next week to mark his departure and lay down what he sees as his legacy in the high-profile role.

Like Shipton, Longo has been careful over his career, which includes a previous stint at the regulator, to cultivate a light corporate footprint.

One thing is clear, he likes to invest in real estate — both residential and commercial.

Along with his two residential properties in the west, Longo has a stake in a syndicate that owns an office building in West Perth.

Fellow owners include Perth’s wealthy Wheatley family, which previously controlled the listed Automotive Holdings Group under patriarch Vern Wheatley.

With real estate booming in Melbourne, Margin Call will be interested to see whether Australia’s new tough cop on the corporate beat elects to rent or buy a roof over his head after he gets his feet under the chairman’s desk.

Illustration: Rod Clement Margin

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Barton hangs around

With plenty to keep Crown Resorts busy, would it be any surprise to hear that its former chief executive Ken Barton was still hanging around?

The long-serving employee was shafted from Crown’s top ranks in the wake of Patricia Bergin’s findings in February of regulatory noncompliance and management failures at the gaming group, though Margin Call hears the Sydney-based Barton may not have punched his timecard for the last time.

Crown Resorts new Chair Helen Coonan with former CEO Ken Barton. Picture: David Geraghty / The Australian.

Chair Helen Coonan took over his role in February, becoming executive chairman, and earlier this month announced a permanent replacement in the form of Lendlease boss Steve McCann, due to start on June 1, pending all probity and regulatory approvals.

Insiders at the casino group, however, say Barton has been spied at the Sydney HQ in Barangaroo.

That’s despite Barton being removed from all but one of his directorships related to Crown in mid-February, leaving only his seat on the board of the Crown Foundation, its charitable arm, which processed $1.6m in donations last financial year.

With a little extra downtime, Barton has set up a new corporate entity with wife Linda Chung, the name of which, Popo Fibib Pty Ltd, is still a mystery to this column.

Chung, formerly of Macquarie’s risk management team, lists her vocation on LinkedIn as “Eastern Suburbs Housewife — Retired”, while her husband still keeps his title as chief executive at Crown Resorts.

Whenever he finally does get around to changing that, might we suggest surely eastern suburbs house husband has a good ring to it.

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Price of ‘treachery’

At least John Barilaro won’t have to worry about former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s vote in this weekend’s crucial Upper Hunter by-election.

Barilaro, Nationals leader in NSW and Deputy Premier to Gladys Berejiklian, reckons Turnbull is “treacherous” to have made a $3000 donation to independent candidate for the seat Kirsty O’Connell.

Former first lady Lucy Turnbull is said also to have given $3000 to O’Connell, who is running against rookie Nats candidate and Upper Hunter local Dave Layzell.

The former PM’s donation has prompted calls for him to hand back his membership or be expelled from the Liberal Party, amid what’s a classic case of “with friends like these who needs enemies?”

Turnbull has an expansive farm in the Hunter Valley, where the agricultural industry is lining up against the power sector, but despite his donation does not vote there, so it’s just his money that the Nats need to counter rather than the Turnbulls’ actual votes.

The former member for Wentworth lives by Sydney Harbour in Point Piper, with the federal seat now held by Liberal Dave Sharma.

Hence Turnbull is registered to vote in the state electorate of Vaucluse, which is held by the Libs’ Gabrielle Upton, with not a power station in sight.

Why are the major parties afraid of an honest conversation with the people of the #UpperHunter ? I talk with @TurnbullMalcolm about the tired politics that is putting the future of my community in jeopardy #UpperHunterVotespic.twitter.com/qZ9PGKnmIH

— Kirsty for Upper Hunter (@KirstyforUpper1) May 9, 2021

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A Thor point

Rich-lister Steve Duchen and his pharmaceutical family are no stranger to a corporate tussle, but his latest development pursuit in Broken Head, in northern NSW, has seen him square up with significantly more star power.

None other than Thor himself, the now Byron-based Chris Hemsworth, has emerged as a vocal opponent to Duchen’s plan to cash in on the tourism boom surrounding the east coast hot spot.

Duchen, whose family sold their Arrow Therapeutics to Sigma in the mid 2000s, has an application before the council that seeks to build 27 cabins and a wellness facility on his Linnaeus Estate site in the Byron shire, in a development worth $9m, a process that has been ongoing for more than a year. But only now has it reached the ears of the superstar and his wife Elsa Pataky, the two joining with traditional custodian Aunty Lois Cook this week to voice their opposition.

“I fully support traditional custodians’ rights to preserve and protect their homelands. This proposed development would have a direct impact on these sacred and significant Indigenous sites,” Hemsworth wrote on Instagram.

No mention there of the couple’s $30m mega-compound just around the corner. How convenient.

INSIDE MARGIN CALL

Crown’s former chief seems to still be hanging around