Shane Warne has decamped from Melbourne, with job commitments taking him to Britain.
The spin king will be on the cricket commentary team for Sky Sports, a gig he’s had for over a decade, after securing a travel exemption from the federal government.
He’s headed over for the six white ball games for Australia versus England, three ODIs and then three T20 matches in September.
First up he’ll be commentating on the England vs Pakistan Test which starts this week in Manchester. He’ll be staying at the hotel within the Old Trafford stadium.
“We go into a bio secure hub, where we stay in our room, then we go down two floors from the hotel, commentate, and then at night, go back to our room and don’t leave. No one in, no one out,” Warne says of his new regimen.
“It won’t be too exciting,” he told Eddie McGuire’s MMM Hot Breakfast, suggesting it would allow him instead to catch up on some “admin and emails”.
He’ll be able to drive himself to Manchester, with his 12-month driving ban provisionally suspended as he fights a speeding offence. It was his sixth British speeding offence over a three-year period.
Back in Australia Warne, who had been hooked on Netflix, re-watching the US drama hit Entourage, recently called a halt to the marketing of his Brighton mansion through local agent Jonathan Dixon.
Meanwhile he’s launched, in partnership with Chemist Warehouse, a fragrance called SW23 with profits going to My Room Children’s cancer charity.
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Net loss
Consumers get no collective comfort from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Judi Jones over the extensive Telstra internet outage that started on Sunday morning.
Indeed the TIO would have householders and businesses spend countless hours individually seeking compensation should they be silly enough to want to further fritter away their time.
“Phone and internet providers do not guarantee 100 per cent uptime,” Jones told Margin Call.
“Outages will occur from time to time given the complex technology involved in delivering telecommunications services and the physical nature of the network.”
Telstra was out for hours across Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Canberra for those staying safe at home with plans for a binge and chill afternoon. Or worse, small businesses struggling through the pandemic.
Telstra advised it was a “massive messaging storm”.
“We will not be providing compensation,” a spokesperson for Telstra’s Andy Penn said.
Jones, who must have never done so, suggested if a consumer or small business believe they were entitled to compensation they should speak to their provider.
“If the problem remains unresolved they should contact my office and we will assess each complaint on a case-by-case basis,” she said.
The massive messaging storm that presented as a Denial of Service cyber-attack has been investigated by our security teams and we now believe that it was not malicious, but a Domain Name Server issue. We're really sorry for getting in the way of your weekend plans.
— Telstra (@Telstra) August 2, 2020
Margin Call reckons Rod Sims at the ACCC ought to dial it up for consumers who deserve an automatic fractional reduction in the monthly charge after any lengthy outage.
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Golden opportunity
It’s been one of the top returning funds in the entire market for the past five years, even before the gold market was running red hot to its $US1980 an ounce record.
Yet suddenly, it seems, the under-the-radar precious metals trading money manager AlphaThorn is no more.
Clients of the firm, which has delivered 30 per cent-plus returns since 2016 and is backed by a firm called Hyper Capital, were told last week that AlphaThorn had been unexpectedly wound up.
AlphaThorn traded in global precious metals markets — principally gold — capturing short-term movements in commodity prices by using an algorithm developed by former global head of precious metals derivatives at Credit Suisse, Brett Trevillian.
Now Margin Call hears a letter to investors sent by the firm on Friday revealed Trevillian was “given an offer too good to be true” and that he had “taken that opportunity”.
The letter went on to say the new owner of the IP was not known but it was expected they would in-source the capability for their own investments.
Most importantly, the investors were returned their money plus any upside from the spectacular performance of the firm, which was run by the former boss of Bennelong Funds Management, Jarrod Brown. Brown had been raising money for AlphaThorn from institutional investors over the past two months.
Hyper Capital is the family office of Sydney entrepreneur Gabriel Jakob and wife Alexandra that reportedly has more than $550m of assets spread across AlphaThorn, property, childcare and technology investments. One investment is in private jet charter business Airly. Just what Jakob made of Trevillian’s move, whether there was a disagreement between them, or why the IP had not been locked up by the firm is not known.
But it appears Trevillian, who is a handy poker player in his spare time, clearly wanted to play his hand elsewhere.
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Trophy home sold
Veteran investment banker Paul Espie and his librarian wife Roslyn have finally sold their 1850s Victorian Gothic, Darling Point trophy home, Callooa. It took two years to secure their seemingly unwavering $25m hopes, with the whispered buyer Jason Huljich, joint CEO of Centuria.
Huljich has sold his $4.7m Elizabeth Bay apartment, which has harbour views diagonally opposite his new acquisition.
Callooa’s notable past owners include Sydney’s first mayor, John Hosking. The New Zealand property developer Rod Petricevic owned it in the mid-1980s.
Espie, the founder of Pacific Road Capital, bought it in 1988 for $5.25m, and nearly lost the house when a retaining wall washed away in a 1998 landslide.
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Stokes extension
Billionaire Kerry Stokes has secured a one-year extension as chair of the Australian War Memorial board. He’s been chair of the Canberra memorial since 2015, having joined the board in 2007.
The timing of Stokes’ reappointment comes with its board arguing the case for its $500m redevelopment. It attracts more than a million visitors every year, but not this year given the pandemic.
The Department of Veteran Affairs has, however, updated an easily accessible Anzac360 app.
The latest app update, which was developed by News Corp Australia, Grainger Films and the department, is available for download free at the App Store.
Short and sweet
The analysis of the judgment in the ASIC case against the media veteran Harold Mitchell continues.
It’s 441 pages, 2025 paragraphs and 190,000 words so there’s plenty of nuggets.
One relates to David Gyngell’s evidence last November. The appearance of the former Nine Entertainment boss fizzled, causing amusement at the time amid the now disproven serious allegation that Mitchell had overseen a below-market sale of tennis broadcast rights to SevenWest Media in 2013.
During his stint in the witness box, Gyngell confirmed Nine had been interested in acquiring the rights, which momentarily appeared to back up ASIC barrister Michael Pearce’s key unproven allegation that Mitchell downplayed real offers from other networks to favour Seven.
But Mitchell’s barrister, Nicholas De Young, SC, then bluntly asked Gyngell: “Did you discuss figures?”
“No,” he said, with the departing Gyngell commenting after his five minutes in the witness box: “I came from Byron Bay for that?”
His Honour Justice Jonathan Beach appeared to have the same scorn towards Pearce in his judgment.
“Gyngell gave short evidence which was inconsequential,” his honour noted.
“He seemed to have a self-awareness of this.”
Sorry from some, but others are silent
Sydney University VC Mark Scott stepped up to the plate to concede his institution had hopelessly failed Jewish students, but others in similar positions were not so forthcoming.
Medical skirmish gets pulses racing
Most lawyers will tell you their work doesn’t save lives, but a case starting on Monday could prove the exception.