Helen Coonan puts her money on Mr Fix-It Leon Zwier

Illustration: Rod Clement

Leon Zwier has carved a niche for himself as a legal Mr Fix-It in everything from massive insolvency disputes to white-collar crime and board battles.

Now Margin Call can reveal the Arnold Bloch Leibler partner has also become Crown Resorts chair Helen Coonan’s new Mr Fix-It in her battle to regain the casino giant’s Sydney casino ­licence.

Zwier was brought in by Coonan to advise on a path to remediation late last year in anticipation of the disastrous findings of the Bergin Inquiry.

The move reunited him with James Packer — the two once served as directors together on the board of financial services giant Challenger before Zwier retired from his role in October 2019.

Leon Zwier.

We hear Zwier has already made his presence felt — Margin Call understands he was in the ear of former AFL boss Andrew Demetriou last week advising him to read the play and step down following Bergin’s report.

He did the same with Ken Barton and we reckon he will be doing the same now with Harold Mitchell and Crown’s legal counsel and company secretary Mary Manos, as both are in the sights of NSW casino regulator chair Philip Crawford.

In fact, we hear Crawford has already had a conversation or two with Zwier and likes what he hears from the ABL supremo, with whom he has worked before over the years.

“Crawford likes the fact that Leon doesn’t like to go the litigation route and prefers to negotiate, unlike Crown’s lawyers Minter Ellison during the inquiry,’’ one associate of Crawford told us.

It is folklore that Melbourne property mogul Rino Grollo named a tricky ski run on Victoria’s Mount Buller the “Zwier Zig Zag” to reward Zwier for his work and pay tribute to his tendency to stray off the beaten track and not do things by the book.

He also charges for the privilege: Crown’s shareholders might wince at Zwier’s hourly rate. But we reckon Coonan could not pay Zwier enough if his pragmatic advice and impeccable connections help her win back Crown’s Sydney licence.

Seven’s sticky wicket

Seven West media chief James Warburton may have Google on side as its first Australian media partner, but there was another showdown brewing as the broadcaster of Big Brother and Holey Moley delivered its interim results on Monday.

While the rest of the local media remains in stark opposition to the tech heavyweight, Seven’s largest shareholder, Kerry Stokes, lauded the new content deal as a “great outcome”, extending his thanks to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, competition regulator Rod Sims and even Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

James Warburton and Kerry Stokes.

In Stokes’s own words, Frydenberg was “instrumental in the outcome of this groundbreaking agreement”.

Instrumental, too, in the billionaire’s son Ryan Stokes’s wedding of 2016.

Recall that the then-energy minister was a groomsman of the younger Stokes when he wed Queensland heiress Claire Campbell at the family’s Sydney harbour-front home.

But back to the results, and the return to profit for the $723m company, helped in part by the reversal of “onerous contracts” in relation to its Cricket Australia and Tokyo Olympics rights deals.

While helpful in this instance, the countdown is on until Seven West has its day in court with Cricket Australia over those very same broadcast rights.

The first day of a pre-discovery hearing is scheduled on March 15, before judge Paul Anastassiou in the Victorian registry of the Federal Court, with the findings of independent “umpire” Justin Jameson also due any moment now.

Seven has drafted in John Atanaskovic’s Atanaskovic Hartnell to plead its case, the same firm it tapped in its proceedings against the AFP in 2014 for raids on its premises related to alleged payments to Schapelle Corby.

It will be hoping for similar success — not only did it win the case and receive an apology from the AFP over the incident, but Corby has also since turned up on the network’s own reality-TV show, SAS Australia — albeit only lasting two days.

It's a win-win, really.

Cricket Australia meanwhile, currently led by interim chief Nick Hockley, is represented by K&L Gates.

JobKeeper riches

The earnings beats just keep on coming, and with them the full picture of just how much the government’s JobKeeper has filled the coffers of some of the listed market’s top execs.

Take listed real estate agency McGrath and the one-time “Mr Real Estate” himself, John McGrath.

For the six months to September last year, the agency received approximately $3m in government grants under ScoMo’s JobKeeper welfare program to keep the economy roaring.

All that while the property market was running hot. Not a bad combo and one that resulted in shares in the now Edward Law-led company hitting a more than three-year high of 57c on Monday.

John McGrath.

While it might be a fair way off the group’s listing price of $2.10 in 2015, the company’s financial position has market pundits weighing up the likelihood of a dividend at next week’s interim results — what would be the first payout for the company in four years.

At its November update, the $91m McGrath told the ASX it had $22.1m in cash and no debt, making “dividend payments now a possibility from the first half of FY21”.

Even a payout of half a cent per share — equal to its last payout in 2017 — would net the founder and executive director himself a tidy $185,600 given he still holds just over 22 per cent of the company.

Perhaps he could use the funds as a deposit on a new place to call home.

While a regular spruiker of the market, remember that the property guru sold his own Walsh Bay abode in Sydney in 2019 for $8.5m, then his last remaining real estate asset.

But with retail do-gooders the likes of Super Retail’s Anthony Heraghty handing $1.7m back to taxpayers, and most recently Nick Scali’s Anthony Scali pledge to return $3.6m to federal coffers — after some community pressure mind you — perhaps McGrath might take the high road instead.

Helen Coonan’s Mr Fix-It

Seven’s sticky wicket

John McGrath’s JobKeeper riches