Joyce’s new company; inside man tipped for Westpac; Packer turns lender to hotelier

It might be six months off, but outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is manoeuvring for life after the national carrier. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

It might be six months off, but outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is already manoeuvring for life after the national carrier.

On Tuesday it became known that Joyce liquidated nearly $17m worth of shares in the airline – nearly his entire stake – months out from his planned retirement. Even with another 228,924 shares remaining, worth about $1.45m at current market prices, the move is a peculiar one for a CEO still occupying the role.

And that’s to say nothing of his residential real estate portfolio, with a value in the ballpark of $50m. Is it any wonder the 56-year-old has called in specialists to calibrate his financial affairs?

Qantas chief Alan Joyce has formed a business partnership with PwC private clients partner Bruce Ellis. Picture: Steve Creedy

Apparently undeterred by the fiasco absorbing PwC, Joyce formed a business entity in late May with the firm’s private clients partner Bruce Ellis. Documents lodged with the corporate regulator show that Joyce registered White Emerald Pty Ltd, naming himself and husband Shane Lloyd as directors alongside Ellis.

The shareholding is split between Joyce and Lloyd, with the business itself registered to PwC’s glass castle in Melbourne’s Southbank. All this after Joyce recently settled on the $9m purchase of a second high-rise apartment in The Rocks, overlooking the Sydney Opera House, and adjacent to a pad he and Lloyd already own.

There’s also a plan in the works to sell the couple’s waterfront mansion in Mosman, which they bought last year for $19m.

Insider man

Westpac chair John McFarlane announced late last year that he would step down during 2023, a decision scheduled to take effect at the banking giant’s AGM on December 14.

A Westpac spokesman told us on Tuesday that no decision had been made on McFarlane’s replacement, but Margin Call is reliably informed that internal candidate Peter Nash, a director at Mirvac and the ASX, is a shoo-in as successor. Industry sources have told us the same, and there was no denial from Westpac when we put it to them formally. This all despite the not insignificant 11.2 per cent protest vote that Nash received against his re-election to the Westpac board in 2022.

Westpac board director Peter Nash is favoured to succeed John McFarlane.

Nash, much like former chair Lindsay Maxsted, is an accountant who ascended to the upper leadership echelons of KPMG. Maxsted was its CEO between 2001 and 2007, with Nash its national chairman between 2011 and 2017.

Westpac’s accounts happen to be audited by PwC, and Nash chairs the board’s audit committee. Any likelihood of an adjustment to those arrangements if he’s appointed?

It would seem PwC is safe – for now, from what we can tell. But it’s a situation being watched closely.

Packer projects

We were wondering what James Packer was going to do with the $3.36bn that he trousered from the sale of Crown Resorts to Blackstone last year. Turns out his latest move is to lend a piece of it out to fund some real estate.

Property development seems to be occupying most of Packer’s attention these days, with Margin Call already noting his peculiar investment in affordable housing – in the Geelong suburb of Corio – and the redevelopment of The Chimes building in Sydney’s Potts Point.

Packer has snaffled 10 per cent of that project, led by Melbourne-based property developer Time & Place, founded by Tim Price in 2015. As of March, Time & Place also became the owner of Melbourne’s Hotel Lindrum on Flinders St, having paid a cool $49.2m to rich-lister Robert Magid for the privilege.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and James Packer on board his superyacht. Picture: Instagram

What we didn’t know was that Packer assisted with the finance on the deal. He’s one of two lenders, alongside Liberman-family backed Merricks Capital, with the site mortgaged to Packer’s vehicle, NPACT Lindrum Pty Ltd.

Never far from a Packer transaction is former crown executive Todd Nisbet. He’s up to his neck in this, too, as a director of NPACT Lindrum and a minority shareholder. Time & Place declined to talk to us about it.

 

 

More APPEA advisers

Peak oil and gas lobby APPEA has recruited yet more external advice in its campaigning against the Albanese government.

In April we noted that the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association had engaged CMAX Advisory, run by former Rudd government staffer Christian Taubenschlag, to fill the gap left by former APPEA government relation’s man Ashley Wells. He left in January to start his own consultancy, taking APPEA members Beach Energy and Esso Australia with him.

Margin Call hears APPEA has hired additional help from 89 Degrees East, a firm run by Alister Jordon and Annie O’Rourke, both of whom are Taubenschlag’s contemporaries from the Rudd government, except they worked for the Rudd-bot himself, Jordon as his chief of staff.

Rudd’s downfall was partly due to the mining industry super-profits tax that he was threatening to introduce on the industry. Jordon was instrumental in bringing that to fruition, and yet now we see him working against his old comrades and taking the side of a mining industry lobby group that’s pushing back against revenue-dredging policies like the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. And also tweaks to industrial relations law (it seems APPEA is trying to kybosh the government’s tightening of labour hire usage).

We asked an APPEA spokesman about the engagement of 89 Degrees East. Normally happy to tell us our information is wrong, he declined to comment altogether.