Icare’s FIFO execs are all old chums; Lights, camera and on your Marks

Icare chief executive Richard Harding. Picture: Richard Dobson

Nothing overtly wrong with a newly appointed CEO surrounding themselves with talented managers collected over a lifetime of strutting between leadership roles.

That’s one explanation for how Richard Harding, chief executive of Insurance and Care NSW, ended up surrounded with a heap of old chums from his stints at the Territory Insurance Office, Insurance Australia Group and Tower Insurance, which he ran between 2015 and 2020.

In November, Margin Call reported that Harding once worked with Nick Meseldzija at Tower Insurance, and we gather that’s how Meseldzija ended up in a GM role at icare, a position we said at the time wasn’t openly advertised as required.

Amanda-Lea Smith worked with Harding at the Territory Insurance Office before her appointment at icare as a group executive for people and culture. Helpfully, she oversaw the hiring of Meseldzija as a head of communications just before he was appointed a GM just six months later. How’s that for career progression! Cute, too, is that we were told by icare at the time that Meseldzija had only been appointed GM on an “interim basis”.

Chief claims officer Ruth Korotcoff worked with Harding at Insurance Australia Group, while Tash Hammond, icare’s head of change, worked with Harding for practically an eon at Tower Insurance and the TIO.

All serendipitous hirings, no doubt (and all subjected to a “rigorous recruitment process”, as an icare spokesman told us). Please.

What’s weird is that none of these people actually reside in NSW, the region where icare was established. Meseldzija and Smith live in Adelaide, Korotcoff lives in Brisbane and Hammond flies in from Darwin. And that’s only when they’re required in the office – they do the rest without the fuss of packing an overnight bag.

Some of these FIFO executives head into Sydney for just a couple of days per week. One of them barely comes in at all, a perk of the job. Were these interstate managers, with their documented histories of faithful toil under Harding, really the best and only candidates available among a vast pool of workers living in Sydney?

An icare spokesman said, to be fair, these executives were hired during Covid, when being in the office didn’t matter as much, and Harding declared the requisite conflicts at the time. Accordingly, he “did not play a role in recruitment decisions”. Like we said: serendipitous!

Moreover, we’re told some pay for their own flights, so no harm done to the taxpayer. In any case, it’s quite an outlay just to turn up to work each week. Any chance the costs were negotiated into their salaries to make up the difference?

Only Hammond seems to be covered by icare, with icare confirming the travel arrangements were built into her salary – but apparently she’s only required to come in a couple of times a quarter.

We know icare’s minister, Sophie Cotsis, is having a good geez at the organisation while it undergoes restructuring. Can’t imagine she’s a big fan of this FIFO malarkey.

Presumably it doesn’t help either that Premier Chris Minns worked as a chief of staff to John Robertson during his years as Labor leader (Robertson being the chair of icare’s board, for the moment).

Lights, camera, action

Hugh Marks and Carl Fennessy have landed $7.5m in fresh equity for their fledgling production studio, Dreamchaser Entertainment, of humble Moore Park origins.

The cheque’s in the mail from Fifth Season, a US-based production house owned by South Korean conglomerate CJ ENM, the big shots behind the 2019 Oscar winner “Parasite”.

Marks, formerly the CEO of Nine Entertainment, and Fennessy, who co-founded Endemol Shine, will probably use the cash – obtained through a preference share arrangement – to grow more film and TV content that they can sell into the fickle Australian market.

Former Nine chief Hugh Marks. Picture: Joel Carrett

There have been other signings in recent weeks, with the pair snapping up a handful of TV and doco makers. They’ve engaged Nine’s former head of drama, Posie Graeme-Evans (McLeod’s Daughters, Hi-5) as an EP along with Debbie Cuell (Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds), Emma Lamb (MAFS) and documentary maker Gil ­Marsden.

Dreamchaser will co-EP the projects and sell the broadcast and format rights. Marks, for those not paying attention, abruptly quit Nine in 2020 following revelations that he was in a relationship with executive Alexi Baker.

All in the family

Candidates on Treasury’s secret shortlist to be appointed RBA governor include Philip Lowe, of course, as well as Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, Jenny Wilkinson, Michele Bullock and David Gruen, among others revealed by this masthead on Thursday.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers is certainly a fan of Wilkinson, the secretary of the Department of Finance, and emphatically sang her praises last year when she was promoted to the role. “Jenny is really the best of the best,” Chalmers is reported to have told Treasury staff in a speech.

Treasury deputy secretary Jenny Wilkinson is a candidate for the RBA’s top job. Picture: Gary Ramage

Presumably it can’t hurt Wilkinson either that her niece, Anna Gruen, works as a macroeconomics adviser in the office of Chalmers, or as a “trusted adviser”, as she was dubbed by Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh during a lecture he gave in honour of her grandfather, renowned economist Fred Gruen, last year. Nor would it necessarily hurt the other Gruen on the RBA shortlist, her uncle David, who’s married to Wilkinson and remains the chief statistician at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.