James Packer holding all the aces at Crown Resorts
After almost a year of deliberation, the $5 billion man James Packer won’t get a pay packet from his listed Crown Resorts.
His $10 million proposal didn’t even make it to the board for final consideration. Kerry’s son decided it was contrary to the Code of the Packers, after briefly considering it for 10 months.
You could say Packer folded his hand of cards.
And — with yesterday’s extraordinary announcement that the Crown universe will be split in two — you could also say Packer then up-ended the card table and dealt himself a better hand.
Just follow the money.
If Crown’s newly announced dividend policy was applied to the past calendar year, Packer would have got an extra $66m from the listed group. That’s on top of the $190m that was actually written on his dividend cheques. Beats $10m any day.
Crown chair and ConsPress boss Rob Rankin won’t get a salary, either. But the pair will be able to charge Crown up to $8m a year for services rendered by their ConsPress minions, with the Crown independent remuneration committee (Geoff Dixon, Harold Mitchell and John Horvath) taking advice on the deal from pay consultant to the stars John Egan.
Packer’s broader demerger plan to stop Crown’s Macau interests dragging on the wider group is being done via a scheme of arrangement. It requires 75 per cent approval of those shares voted and a majority of those who vote on the scheme.
Packer and Perpetual have a combined 55.2 per cent. So if the turnout is low that will go a long way to getting the deal — which for some reason is also going to need to be signed off by the tax man — over the line.
Smiggle rules
The news was more straightforward over at fellow billionaire Solly Lew’s Premier Investments. Premier’s chief Mark McInnes got his pay rise yesterday after Lew and major investors united to wave the hike through.
Minorities voted against the largesse. But there was enough support to approve McInnes’s new bikkies, which include a
$1m pay jump, three years of rent assistance and permission to flog about $12m worth of Premier shares to pay for a new house he plans to build on upmarket Toorak’s Hopetoun Road.
But it seems there are other more pressing matters on the retailer’s mind and it’s not the impact of the so-called “Brexit” on his stationery shop Smiggle in Britain.
“I have a five-year-old son turning six and up until this year he wasn’t into Smiggle, and I came home one day and he’s in kinder and he asked me, ‘Dad, do you know this brand Smiggle?’,” McInnes recounted.
“I said, ‘I do’.”
“He said, ‘everyone’s got a lunch box and a water bottle but me — you have to take me shopping to get Smiggle’.
“So the next Saturday, at Chadstone, Will and I walk in. $150 later. The child drives the demand … I think Brexit might have an impact on sentiment, but it won’t have an impact
on us.”
Penn plates up
Soon-to-be-married Telstra boss Andy Penn was at Justin Hemmes’ French bistro Felix on Tuesday night.
Ahead of his nuptials planned for later this month in Tuscany (on election weekend), Penn dined with former Foxtel boss Richard Freudenstein, 51, who since leaving the pay-TV shop in March has been enjoying time in his expansive spread in Mosman and keeping on top of his REA Group board duties.
The pair looked chummy at their first proper catch-up since Freudenstein left Foxtel after a 4½-year stint in the big chair.
There’s plenty to talk about as speculation continues about News Corp buying out Telstra’s half stake in Foxtel, and potentially rolling the business up with Fox Sports for a sharemarket float.
However, speculation that Freudy may have snared a groomsman role at the Tuscan affair was misplaced. In fact we gather Freudy isn’t going to Penn’s wedding to Nebraskan Latin ballroom dancer Kallie Blauhorn, who is also the director of the Monash Gallery of Art.
Gosh, there’s Josh
It’s been a formative few weeks for media, truck and oil scion Ryan Stokes.
Kerry’s heir got engaged to Claire Campbell of the footwear dynasty. He turned 40 on May 31.
And — surely most exciting of all — Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and wife Amie attended Ryan’s recent birthday party at another one of Justin Hemmes’ Sydney restaurants, est.
The Merivale proprietor and partner Kate Fowler even made it along. The weekend before Hemmes lent his Gothic mansion, The Hermitage, in the Sydney harbourside enclave of Vaucluse, to Tony Nutt’s Liberal Party for what has been declared the party fundraiser of the season.
Get cosy with Tony
Speaking of fundraisers, it’s good to see that federal Liberal director Tony Nutt is making use of former prime minister Tony Abbott. Tickets are now on sale to an exclusive dinner in this campaign’s fundraising ground zero: the Sydney CBD.
Dinner with Abbott next Monday costs $3000 — not cheap but a fair discount to the $10,000 that was charged at PM Malcolm Turnbull’s recent affair at John Schaffer’s place in Perth.
For now the dinner location is secret, perhaps as Nutt gauges the popularity of his revival act.
Raise the flag
It was almost a case of don’t mention the submarines as Lucy Turnbull was bade auf wiedersehen from her role as honorary chair of the Australia Germany Chamber of Commerce yesterday.
But then the German ambassador Christoph Muller, who was also being farewelled, rose to speak about the good health of German-Australian relations, noting that they had just emerged from a “dark, dark aborted underwater mission” back into the light.
As this organ’s associate editor Cameron Stewart has written, the Germans were surprised at not winning the contract for Australia’s new submarine fleet, but they have put that behind them.
And anyway, yesterday at the Art Gallery of NSW was all about Lucy, who also jointly chaired an advisory panel on relations between the two countries.
Such was her contribution the Germans yesterday awarded her the order of merit, which comes with a fetching gold and crimson cross.
Proud hubby Malcolm — who raced back from electioneering in Perth for the occasion — was moved almost to tears as he spoke.
“I love you so much and you are such a credit to Australia,” Malcolm said to an audience that included son Alex and Alex’s wife Yvonne, and German-speaking finance minister Mathias Cormann.
“If I wasn’t German I would be moved to tears right now,” deadpanned one of the chamber’s senior members.
Lucy has been succeeded as honorary president by BHP’s Andrew Mackenzie.
It’s the second recent award for our first lady, who last week was made the patron of the United States Studies Centre, the employer of her son-in-law James Brown, who wrote the current Quarterly Essay (the one highly critical of Tony Abbott’s foreign policy chops) and who last year rolled Woollahra councillor Peter Cavanagh for the presidency of the Liberal Party’s Paddington branch. Brown is one to watch.
Talk of the town
Speaking of Liberals on the make, a mighty crowd gathered yesterday among the art and antiques at the Woolloomooloo offices of the Stokes family’s private company, Australian Capital Equity, to salute Tim Wilson, the former freedom commissioner and now almost Member for Goldstein.
Not a bad spot for Wilson, a former fine arts student, to admire the hanging Charles Blackman paintings.
Mayor of Wombat Hollow Michael Yabsleyand Kerry Stokes’s adviser Warwick Smith helpedorganise the lunch of 30-odd guests.
Among their numbers were two former NSW premiers, Nick Greiner and Barry O’Farrell, and Sydney’s radio broadcast king Alan Jones.
That’s quite a turnout for a still-to-be-elected MP from Melbourne.
It won’t be long before agitation begins for Wilson to gain a ministerial spot in the re-elected Turnbull government. Mark our words.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.