Tom Waterhouse takes a punt on Harvard

Illustration: Rod Clement.

School’s back for William Hill Australia boss Tom Waterhouse.

Margin Call understands that while the unloved, structurally challenged antipodean outpost of the British gaming giant William Hill was last week all but ­officially put on the market, its nominal CEO Waterhouse was off at an executive management course at Harvard. Seems a bit late in the day for that.

William Hill’s spokesman refused to answer questions about Waterhouse and Harvard.

“We don’t disclose that information,” he said, sounding extremely uncomfortable with the Ivy League line of questioning.

But we understand Waterhouse was last week at the extravagantly endowed Harvard campus, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the fifth instalment of a management course that runs over nine years, in annual week-long instalments.

The telegenic Waterhouse has since returned to the Australian outpost of Philip Bowcock’s London-headquartered William Hill where, by all accounts, morale is understandably terrible.

After sinking about $700 million on a failed expansion in Australia, William Hill’s British overlords have made it clear they are just about done with the local operations.

With news like that to return to, it’s a wonder Waterhouse didn’t extend his Harvard stay.

Cat puts family first

Like a pure-bred Persian cat let loose on Parramatta Road, ­Antony Catalano is no more.

The charismatic Catalano’s life as a listed CEO lasted all of two months (that’s including the summer holidays).

So what the hell happened to the former Domain CEO?

Catalano spent the summer with his wife Stefanie at a rented house at Portsea, the Victorian coastal town that neighbours Sorrento (where The Cat’s friend Mark McInnes has a place).

“(‘The Cat’) decided to put his family first,” said Domain’s red-faced chairman Nick Falloon, also the chairman of the property advertising business’s 60 per cent shareholder Fairfax (from which it was spun off in November).

That curiously timed summer revelation sees Catalano walk away from an annual base pay of $1.2m, plus towards $5m worth of options.

Antony Catalano with his wife Stefanie. Picture: Aaron Francis

Sources close to The Cat tell us he will not receive any termination payment or any portion of his options.

Notably, the former Domain CEO — who was synonymous with the property company — will have no ongoing consulting role with the company, which seems strange considering that travel between Sydney and Melbourne was supposedly the reason for his departure.

Domain shares fell 17.7 per cent yesterday, the most of any ASX 200 stock. Fairfax was second worst, down 9.7 per cent.

All the while brokers, investors, journalists and media executives swapped stories — of questionable veracity — about the circumstances leading up to Catalano’s familial epiphany.

Meanwhile, The Cat’s billionaire friend, and major Domain and Fairfax shareholder, Alex Waislitz was off on holiday in Morocco. Wonder what he makes of it all?

Ellis in the running

So now attention moves to The Cat’s replacement. Former REA Group boss Greg Ellis, who currently runs German classifieds business Scout24 in addition to sitting on the Falloon-chaired Domain board, is clearly a possibility.

Ellis was a part of private equity giant Hellman & Friedman’s abandoned $2.87 billion bid for Fairfax last year.

Former News Corp executive Greg Ellis. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

The Germany-based Ellis — who will make up to $70m by running Scout24 — has a house in Melbourne’s Balwyn, where his wife Meryl and kids live.

Could Falloon lure him home to take over the gig? The job is surely Ellis’s if he wants it, but that would depend on whether he can extricate himself from Scout24 without forfeiting his German loot.

In the meantime, Falloon is the company’s executive chairman, a role he was already acting in by the time he addressed Domain’s staff in Sydney yesterday morning, as Catalano listened on with staff in the company’s Melbourne HQ.

The Domain board accepted Catalano’s resignation on Sunday, but has not yet decided whether Falloon will get a raise to compensate for his increased duties.

Decisions, decisions.

Dearth in Davos

Despite the shutdown in Washington, Donald Trump and his entourage are still expected to attend Davos to make the World Economic Forum’s marquee conference great again.

The four-day summit of the Masters of the Universe gets under way tomorrow.

As is a bit of a tradition, there have been reports of the paucity of attendees from Australia, along with a torching of some of those few who have dared brave the snow. Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s attendance has particularly excited some Australian Davos watchers. But the Australian drought seems to have been a bit exaggerated.

Missed in earlier dispatches are Westpac boss Brian Hartzer, who is attending Davos with Westpac’s institutional boss Lyn Cobley (one of many floated as a possible replacement of Ian Narev at CBA).

Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott will also be along for his first Davos as the Perth-headquartered conglomerate’s CEO and will be joined by his new CFO, Anthony Gianotti.

Other Australians attendees include Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Trade Minister Steven Ciobo, Dow Chemical boss Andrew Liveris, Australian Institute of Company Directors chairman Elizabeth Proust, Australian National University vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt and union boss Sharan Burrow.

Westpac withdrawal

To more parochial Westpac news: Chloe Shorten has bailed on the Hartzer-ledbank.

In the lull just before Christmas, Bill Shorten revealed that his wife (who among other gigs is a director of the Linda Rubinstein-chaired Industry Fund Services) had sold her shares in Westpac.

December doesn’t look like a great time to sell out of the bank. By then Westpac was trading just over $31 a share after falling from over $35 in April.

Chloe Shorten with husband Bill.

Her Opposition Leader husband hadn’t helped with the investment via his relentless championing of a royal commission into the banks last year. Now that the Turnbull government has established one, under the capable leadership of former High Court judge Kenneth Hayne, will other investors follow Chloe’s lead?

To go by parliamentary disclosures over the summer period, Westpac seems to have fallen out of favour with the ALP.

NSW Labor senator Deborah O’Neill — who has an impressive portfolio of six properties in Queensland, NSW, the ACT and Tasmania — has switched her banking from Westpac to Andrew Thorburn’s NAB.

The Melbourne-headquartered NAB is also popular with fellow NSW Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who over summer revealed that bonds in Thorburn’s bank are a key part of his investment portfolio, along with bonds in BHP, Woodside Petroleum and Santos.