It seems like it’s only a matter of time before every member of Sydney’s vaunted investment community faces its own probe into the difference between the happy-go-lucky work environment they market versus the “powerpoints at 3am” reality they demand.
Already we have seen NAB run the ruler over its troubled markets team, EY Oceania has faced claims of a toxic culture by former Sex Discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins and our friends in PwC have been investigated by former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski.
Oaktree Capital is next on the list, with the US asset management giant’s Australian office enjoying the best legally privileged investigation money can buy.
Oaktree Capital, one of the world’s largest distressed debt investors, markets itself as a workplace committed to diversity and inclusion, but from the sounds of it things haven’t been so harmonious in the Sydney office.
Law firm friends at Ashurst, who market themselves as the cuddliest lawyers in Sydney, were brought in to run the ruler over Oaktree in the wake of several exits from the Byron Beath-run business.
Several former employees have reportedly walked out the door warning of “bad culture” and “bad management” at the firm’s Australian office.
We put the online griping to Oaktree Capital’s friends in media management but were told the firm wouldn’t be providing any comment.
We’ll let you know if we hear more.
Holding court
Ahead of their bigwigs’ appearance in Canberra on Friday afternoon, the corporate watchdog has told us that its investigation into the conduct of former PwC Australia international tax partner Peter Collins was “ongoing”.
This followed our reporting earlier this week that a procession of ASIC execs, led by chair Joe Longo, was set to conga line into a hearing of the senator Deb O’Neill-chaired Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services.
Part of the contingent will be one of Longo’s deputies, Sarah Court, who had already appeared before the committee in June.
We hope Court’s appearance goes better than last time, when she was grilled about ASIC’s actions vis-a-vis PwC’s corporate fall guy Collins.
Back then, she told O’Neill’s committee the Tax Practitioners’ Board in its investigations of PwC’s tax affair had found Collins was not a fit and proper person.
In fact, that wasn’t correct. In August, after hearing from Collins’ lawyers, Court had to write to the committee to correct her evidence, noting in a two-page letter that the “TPB … did not find that Mr Collins was not a fit and proper person”. Whoops, a matter you’d think she’d have her head around.
But why does it matter?
Because ASIC is considering “the conduct of Mr Collins in his role as an authorised representative of the Australian financial services licence holder, PwC” (of which he isn’t one anyway) and the test for that is whether he is fit and proper.
Problem is, what if ASIC decides differently from the TPB (noting that ASIC could reveal its findings as early as today)?
If one concludes he is fit and proper and the other concludes he’s not?
Shouldn’t Australia’s regulators be on the same page?
Battle over skies
While Australia’s Qantas prepares for the battleground that will be its annual meeting in Melbourne in a couple of weeks time, its international rival Qatar Airways continues to run rings around our Vanessa Hudson-led national carrier.
No one could miss the wall-to-wall, national news coverage on Tuesday night of the first flight to touch down in Sydney bringing Australian citizens home from Israel.
Alas the livery was not that of Qantas but rather the Qatari-government owned carrier. Advertising money couldn’t buy that kind of exposure as the Middle Eastern airline continues to lobby for reconsideration of the Albanese government’s decision to deny it more landing slots here.
And our eyes in Canberra couldn’t miss and report back on the massive, bright red, hot air balloon drifting over the national capital and seemingly hovering over Parliament House on
Wednesday morning also bearing the Qatar branding.
Word is the ambush marketing campaign being undertaken by Qatar, whose lobbyist in Canberra is Eamonn Fitzpatrick, former senior press secretary to Labor leaders Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Morris Iemma and Anna Bligh, has not been lost on Qantas operatives.
Qantas is said to have provided its flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai earlier in the week free of charge, but nevertheless has already lost the PR battle to Qatar.
The Liberals’ loss of government in NSW has seen Fitzpatrick expand his Fitzpatrick Advisory operations, with former UNSW government relations specialist Tamara Lions joining as a director of the firm.
The right drop
Just-returned former high commissioner to India Barry O’Farrell might have governed the state of NSW, but it seems his spectre looms just as large over the West Australian parliament.
At least when it comes to disclosures by wild west pollies to that state’s Legislative Assembly’s register of interests, which is published annually and has just landed for the 2023 financial year.
At 310-plus pages, the register makes for a fine door stop or sleep medication substitute, but at least one disclosure from Bill Johnston, the state’s Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Energy and Industrial Relations, managed to hook Margin Call’s attention.
Johnston is quite particular about what wines he will accept as gifts and those he won’t, but still making sure it all goes down in detail in his register of interests. That’s unlike O’Farrell, whose career running NSW was ended by a bottle of Grange he forgot to declare.
Johnston, following a meeting that was taken by one of his staffers with Perth business consultant Richard Cao from Aus Consulting Group, refused to accept a bottle of Penfolds Bin 600, worth about $350.
On another meeting with Johnston, Cao – who describes himself as a “bridge between Chinese investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders and their Australian counterparts” – gave the pollie another three bottles of wine, estimated to be worth collectively less than $500, which Johnston in contrast opted to keep.
Champion of the battlers has his expenses queried
Allan Fels built a reputation for crusading on behalf of the little guy. So why is he in a stoush with NSW Treasury over his taxpayer-funded expenses?
Tink turns opaque on finance transparency
Kylea Tink’s passion for trying to extract and publish every last detail of campaign financing from rival political parties seems to run out of steam when it comes to her own donation receipts.