Like the Battle of Culloden, Scots College Sydney has surrendered in its fight over a planned expansion, conceding on plans to boost the school’s size by 400 students.
The Bellevue Hill bastion had raised local ire after announcing big plans to pave the paradise that was its tennis court and put up a parking lot.
Scots lodged its application with the council in 2019, with the council moving to nix the plans on grounds it would create a traffic snarl in the already congested streets as no doubt hundreds more black Range Rovers would converge on the sleepy streets at pick-up and drop-off time.
Scots took the first win after the Sydney Eastern City Planning panel waived it through, leading to neighbour Ian Joye lodging objections and court action.
Joye, owner of one of Sydney’s grandest eastern suburbs piles, Barford Estate, was concerned the school tennis court-cum-car park would block his harbour views.
Skip Capital boss and founder Kim Jackson and husband, Atlassian chief executive Scott Farquhar, had been in talks to buy Barford Estate, but a mismatch of expectations, and the potential of a few hundred extra screaming children, led to the deal falling flat.
But the council revealed at a meeting last week the school had pulled its plans to increase its size to 1520, with student numbers to remain at 1120.
Woollahra developer assessments manager Nick Economou told a meeting of the council that Joye had removed himself as party to its appeal against the planning panel’s decision, but the car park remains on the cards.
The two sides held a conference on March 24, with them walking away with “no longer any issues in dispute”.
Tennis anyone?
Full house
It was an unusually mild Melbourne night and out they came to see one of Wall Street’s top bankers, James Gorman.
The Morgan Stanley chief executive was back in his home town as the keynote speaker at State Library Victoria’s Keith Murdoch Oration – the first time the event has been held since Covid-19 struck.
Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch headed up the guest list, along with News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson. These days based in New York, Thomson famously started his career down the road as a copy kid with the Herald.
It was a full house and black tie only with the financial sector well represented.
Flagstaff Partners chair Charles Goode and his wife Cornelia were there, with NAB chief executive Ross McEwan and wife Stephanie. Bankers were naturally out in force, even old ones, with former Westpac chair Lindsay Maxsted dusting off his tux.
Rivalries were put aside, with Citi’s top advisory boss Alex Cartel welcoming Gorman to the fold in his capacity as chair of the State Library of Victoria’s foundation council. Morgan Stanley Australian boss Richard Wagner put in an appearance, as did Victorian Funds Management Corporation chair James MacKenzie and PwC executive Ian Carson, Tanarra Capital’s John Wylie – a former state library president – and Steven Sewell from Abacus Property. Joining them was outgoing Cbus boss Justin Arter and David Elias from Hostplus.
GFG Alliance chief executive Sanjeev Gupta made the trip from the UK, accompanied by newly minted Australian British Chamber of Commerce chief executive Ticky Fullerton.
Melbourne’s legal fraternity was represented by Gilbert + Tobin partner Janet Whiting, while the man who used to run Victoria, John Brumby, arrived shortly before State Library Victoria president Christine Christian began the official proceedings.
Gorman kept the audience on the edge of their seats on the same day the RBA halted its most aggressive series of interest rate hikes in three decades. Steep hikes across the Western world have sparked panic across the US and European banking sectors, prompting regulators to step in to calm nerves.
But Gorman sees bank runs and government intervention in the banking sector as a fact of life because “you can’t regulate away fear” – the underlying cause of bank runs.
He believes regulatory action can keep a cap on the underlying causes of that fear. “Force banks to operate with small sandboxes, vigilant oversight, aligned compensation policies, strong boards, stable CEOs, intentional succession planning, rigorous annual stress tests and capable supervision,” is one of his mantas. “Even with that, some individual banks may fail but it is much less likely to be systemic.”
Brick by brick
The slow moving dumpster fire that is the collapse of home builder Porter Davis Homes was an awful shock to customers who were in the middle of having their homes built, or to new clients who had just handed over their life savings only to see Porter Davis suddenly and unexpectedly go under.
However, the Porter Davis failure wasn’t such a surprise to Brickworks boss Lindsay Partridge, who as the CEO of the nation’s largest brick maker as well as other crucial home construction materials had been hearing rumours of collapses in the sector for quite some time.
Partridge told Margin Call as far back as late 2021 upon the then collapse of Brisbane-based home builder Privium that more home builders would be going under, and his forecasts sadly have been proved correct.
Brickworks is now a creditor in the Porter Davis liquidation, and what has surprised or bemused Partridge is the quick leap Porter Davis made from a fully functioning and operating business – still taking deposits from customers – to immediate liquidation.
If an administrator had been brought in first to handle the mess there could have possibly been a workaround with suppliers and creditors, such as Brickworks, to finish off the homes, Partridge argues, instead of the race to liquidation that has left thousands of homes unfinished and tradies, builders and suppliers out of pocket.
And Partridge does fear more home builders will be collapsing. Companies such as Porter Davis looked to have locked themselves into home contracts 12 or 18 months ago, fixing the price to capture the sale, but as the price of everything from labour, timber, energy, bricks and nails began to rise it made those sales unprofitable.
Porter Davis isn’t the only home builder sitting on a stack of home builds that are utterly loss making and will never see a profit given the locked price contracts versus the reality of skyrocketing construction costs.
The question is, who will be next? Partridge might be the first to know and he is bracing for more collapses this year.
Super retailer’s exit
It’s bon voyage to Super Retail founder and largest shareholder Reg Rowe, who is retiring from the board of the ASX-listed retailer that owns Supercheap Auto, BCF, Macpac and Rebel.
He and his late wife Hazel founded Super Retail as a mail order business on their kitchen table 50 years ago, and it is now a $3bn retail powerhouse with some of the best retail brands in the category.
Rowe won’t be a stranger though to the stores and its staff, pleading in his letter to team members that he will still be seen walking around the stores “making sure you’ve got enough stock and signage”.
“I can assure you I will continue to be a part of the business. I’ll always be popping in to stores to fill up my shed or plan my next trip,’’ he said in his goodbye letter to the troops.
Which means Super Retail boss Anthony Heraghty can also be guaranteed the odd phone call or text message about a messy floor or crooked sign in a local shop.
Rowe will also still be a major landlord to Super Retail. Last year, according to its annual report, Rowe received store lease payments of $10.47m.
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