Harbour Energy steps on the gas, appoints lobbyist for Santos bid

Ian Smith and Natasha Stott Despoja at a Sydney Institute annual dinner. Picture: James Croucher

Here’s the answer to corporate Australia’s $13.5 billion question of the day: who has Harbour Energy’s Linda Cook hired to lobby Canberra on her FIRB-contentious bid for chairman Keith Spence’s gas outfit Santos?

Margin Call can reveal the gig has been awarded to Ian Smith, partner at blue chip boutique Bespoke.

Cook’s Houston-based multinational Harbour Energy has just been added to Bespoke’s lucrative Canberra clientele, which includes Shayne Elliott’s ANZ, Craig Drummond’s Medibank and Jennifer Westacott’s BCA.

Enlisting Smith to Team Cook makes a lot of sense.

Like Santos, he is that rarest of Australian corporate animals: one based in South Australia.

And in a promising sign for fund managers and shareholders uncertain about whether Treasurer Scott Morrison and his Foreign Investment Review Board chairman David Irvine will give the nod to the calculated bid, the Bespoke co-founder’s powers of persuasion are such that he managed get former Democrats leader and senator for South Australia Natasha Stott Despoja to agree to marry him.

Exactly how remains one of Adelaide’s great unsolved mysteries.

While married to a Democrat, the former Liberal staffer’s connections to the Blue Team are impeccable. Smith was, remember, Alexander Downer’s business partner before the former Foreign Minister set off to London’s Stoke Lodge.

Making his appointment even more logical, Smith and fellow Bespoke partner Andrew Butcher’s shop is loosely aligned with Fairfax adviser Sue Cato (previously an adviser to Santos back in the Ken Borda-era) and Street Talk editor-at-large Brett Clegg’s Surry Hills-based outfit.