Ever since former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews was spotted at a New York airport last month, the rumour mill has been on overdrive south of the Murray River as to what he was up to and what his first job out of politics will be.
Who was he meeting in New York? Holiday or business?
It’s been the talk of Collins St office towers, cosy pubs and little Greek taverns as everyone talks of Andrews’ next gig.
One story doing the rounds, particularly along Melbourne’s business heart of Collins St, is that Andrews is angling for an executive role with the local PGA or the PGA Tour in the US, the organiser of professional golf tournaments in North America as well as the prestigious Presidents Cup. Jetting over to the US could have been step one in that dream.
Andrews is a mad keen golfer, plays on a very low single-digit handicap apparently, and it just so happens that Victoria has extremely strong links with the Presidents Cup. The same Presidents Cup presided over by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan who – guess what? – Andrews is known to have a very good relationship with.
It’s just a stroke of luck, good fortune, or perhaps some help from the Victorian taxpayer, that has seen the prestigious Presidents Cup played in Victoria three times already, with the 2028 Presidents Cup set to be played at Kingston Heath to mark the event’s fourth visit to Melbourne. No other city in the world has had such an honour. Also, it has been announced that the Presidents Cup would come back to Melbourne in 2040.
When Andrews was opposition leader more than 10 years ago, one of his election pledges was that a future Labor government would pour as much as $10m into a “home of golf” project that would see the head offices of PGA Australia, Golf Australia and Golf Victoria in once centre. Talk about old fashioned Labor heartland values!
Last year as premier he opened the Australian Golf Centre in Sandringham, in the sandbelt of Melbourne’s southeast suburbs. The $18.8m Australian Golf Centre at Sandy Golf Links includes state-of-the-art facilities, eateries and administration offices for all the key golfing both bodies, with it reported at the time the Andrews government supported the redevelopment of the Sandy Golf Links course as well as the new Australian Golf Centre, contributing $15.3m of the total cost.
Andrews has always been a big supporter of the PGA Tour grouping. When the Saudis came knocking on Victoria’s door last year to spruik their LIV Golf event, it was reported that the Victoria government said “thanks but no thanks” and instead the LIV tour shifted to Adelaide.
So maybe next Andrews could become involved in the sport from the inside, instead of just hitting a ball around Kingston Heath or Yarra Bend.
Plenty of endeavour
Bring your popcorn and possibly some towels to wipe up the blood from the floor as the Endeavour Group annual general meeting kicks off on Tuesday, which fittingly is Halloween.
For a month now Endeavour’s largest shareholder, Bruce Mathieson Sr, has been battling the board led by chairman Peter Hearl, chief executive Steve Donohue and quite frankly anyone else who gets in his way as he tries to get his candidate Bill Wavish onto the board.
As corporate brawls go, its been a doozy. Scathing public accusations, background briefings, threatening lawyers letters, PR firms on the payroll spreading mischief, demands for boardroom documents and calls for management sackings – and many times all of that just on one day.
Within the Mathieson camp there is a growing sense that Wavish won’t be elected, especially after Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci revealed this week that the retailer would use its 9.1 per cent stake to vote against the rebel director bid. The nation’s superannuation funds, led by the likes of AustralianSuper, which has 7.5 per cent of Endeavour, will probably follow proxy advice and also vote against Wavish.
But Mathieson is looking beyond that and for the next battle to come. With a large chunk of his wealth tied up in Endeavour, he isn’t going anywhere. But who might be going somewhere could be Endeavour chairman Hearl.
There is a growing push by some funds managers and investors for Hearl to leave the board gracefully at some point, sooner rather than later perhaps. There is a Melbourne Cup field of possible candidates who could step into the role then as chairman of the company whose businesses include Dan Murphy’s, BWS and 354 pubs, and who would be favoured by investors.
The names being thrown around include current Air New Zealand boss Greg Foran, one-time boss of Walmart’s US supermarkets where he looked after 4600 stores and more than 1 million staff, as well as being once a contender for the CEO role at Woolworths about a decade ago.
Also mentioned in dispatches as a possible Endeavour chairman is Ari Mervis, recently anointed to be the next chairman of Myer, but who has loads of beverages experience having led the acquisition and integration of Carlton & United Breweries by SABMiller, and having previously been the executive chairman of Accolade Wines.
Former Coca-Cola Amatil boss Terry Davis is also being mentioned by some as a possible candidate.
Meanwhile, the Mathieson camp continues to send out material to Endeavour shareholders to lobby for Wavish, sending an email around on Friday, although Wavish now looks set to lose the vote.
Geminder pushes on
Packaging mogul Raphael Geminder continues to spruik his cheeky takeover bid to mop up Pact Group where he is offering shareholders 68c a share to take stock off their hands, against a share price on market that is stubbornly staying above 70c.
In a recent email to shareholders from Kin Group, Geminder’s private company, he reminds investors to really consider the offer. He also thanks the 531 Pact shareholders who have already accepted the offer. When the takeover was launched last month, Geminder was sitting at 50.004 per cent ownership of Pact. Now he’s at 50.4 per cent.
Then there is the usual game of poking holes in the Pact valuation Kroll has come up with in the target statement. The independent expert has labelled Geminder’s 68c-a-share offer as “neither fair nor reasonable” and below Kroll’s estimated value of a Pact share of $1.06-$1.51.
“Kin Group is concerned that Pact’s target statement is not balanced, is selective and has the potential to mislead,” Geminder’s company argues in its latest email to shareholders.
For now, the sharemarket says otherwise. The takeover offer closes on November 8.
Taxing times
What a difference 12 minutes makes when you’re the big dog in the tax world.
As revealed to the Senate in its response to questions on notice from firebreather Labor Senator and Angola traveller Deborah O’Neill, the Australian Taxation Office found out the discoveries of the landmark probe into PwC Australia’s tax scandal with 12 minutes’ notice.
Readers may remember former Telstra boss and corporate veteran Ziggy Switkowski was brought in by PwC CEO Tom Seymour as Seymour desperately attempted to hold on to his job at the audit-consulting funhouse.
Readers may also remember PwC didn’t really want Switkowski looking into the tax scandal, with a number of the key figures involved in the misuse of confidential information not made available to him, nor the terms of reference dwelling on the question of who did what, when, or how.
The ATO, which kicked the hornet’s nest and ultimately triggered the defenestration of Seymour, has been keen watchers of this whole scandal.
PwC has been at pains to tell the public how much it has co-operated with the various police and regulatory probes into its poor showing.
But when push came to shove, PwC told the ATO of Switkowski’s findings at 12.48pm, just shy of the 1pm publication of the report.
Co-operation.
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