Green’s B&B mates spruik lifestyle parks

Cartoon: Peter Nicholson

First Phil Green’s Babcock & Brown crew came for your retirement income. Now, one member of the same crew is coming for your holidays.

These days Green, who was boss of B&B when it ran up the $12 billion in debt that eventually crushed it, hangs out a shingle as “consultant” at investment outfit Alceon.

He’s among friends. Former B&B head of capital markets Trevor Loewensohn is Alceon’s managing director (and controls a third of the company’s shares).

Other B&B alumni include Todd Pepper, who works in real estate out of the Brisbane office.

Pepper is also part of Gateway Lifestyle, which runs a business selling older people units in caravan parks it manages.

Last week, his partner in Gateway, Trent Ottawa, was out on the road spruiking the group to institutions, with an IPO or trade sale said to be in the works.

In its presentation, Gateway says it is “focused on conversion of short-term sites within mixed use parks” — ie, kicking out holidaymakers and single mums in favour of retirees (alas, planning rules stop it booting them all). No more beach for you.

Not easy being Lee

IT’S complicated being jailbird Malaysian tycoon Lee Ming Tee, aka “Gleaming Teeth”.

For example, how does Lee, who did a year in prison in Hong Kong in 2004 for falsifying company accounts, remember which hat he has on when talking about Metals X and Tanami Gold?

Metals X yesterday agreed to pay Tanami $11m cash plus $4m worth of scrip for its flagship Central Tanami Project.

On the Metals X side, 24 per cent of its shares are held by Hong Kong-listed APAC Resources, which boast’s Lee’s son Lee Seng Hui on the board, through broker Sung Hung Kai, which is also associated with Lee.

And on the Tanami side, it is 32 per cent-owned by Allied Properties Resources, which belongs to the Lee family, and another 13 per cent is held by a Sun Hung Kai client.

Lee Seng Hui was also on the board until November 2013.

None of this was disclosed to the market yesterday, but Tanami chairman Gerard McMahon said it was all above board.

“This is a perfectly legitimate transaction and if there was any conflict of interest it would have been disclosed to shareholders,” he said.

“We get $11m cash upfront plus $4m in Metal X shares, and then Metal X spends lots of money bringing (the mine) up to speed, which is likely to cost tens of millions.”

He said the company would probably use the cash to retire its $11m in debt ... owed to Lee family’s Brunei-based Sun Hung Kai International Bank. Of course.

Rinehart’s HK gig

GINA Rinehart isn’t often seen these days except in fiction (Nine’s House of Hancock) and print (Friday night’s spray against Fairfax Media management).

But in a coup for Hong Kong’s Mines and Money conference, Her Roy Hill Highness is to make a public appearance at the shindig, set for late March.

Attendees have been promised an update on her Roy Hill iron mine. No word yet on whether she will again berate Aussie workers as lazy or Fairfax bosses as incompetent.

Raising a laugh

THE Swedes may have given us a bit to laugh at over the years (cue Abba videos) but they’re a country not famed for their sense of humour.

So it’s unclear whether Ansell’s Swedish boss, Magnus Nicolin, intended some of the puns on yesterday’s conference call with analysts.

After all, this is a company that makes a range of condoms sold across the world but is most proud of its “vertical developments”.

“The US market is solid and it is developing and it does go up and down a little bit but up and down on a positive curve,” Nicolin deadpanned.

“Europe is always a mixed bag,” the po-faced Swede added.

“We expect the sexual wellness business to get back to its growth mojo in the coming 12 months.”

For Ansell, the recovery in Europe clearly cannot come soon enough.