Jayne Hrdlicka’s landing stretches patience

Always a party: Jayne Hrdlicka tries to get out of her seat, stepping past Margaret Court & husband Barry at the Australian Open Women's Tennis final, at Rod Laver Area in Melbourne. Stuart McEvoy/The Australian.

On Sunday, former Jetstar chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka stepped off her flight at Brisbane airport … and straight into a waiting stretch limousine. You couldn’t make it up.

Hrdlicka, after two weeks in quarantine, will head to Virgin Australia’s new HQ in Southbank, where she is expected to join the airline’s new board after its takeover by private equiteers Bain Capital.

Jayne Hrdlicka arrives at Brisbane Airport to a waiting limo on Sunday.

Virgin staff have already been on high alert that their new owners, assisted by their former employee Hrdlicka, are set on making big changes. After all, 3000 jobs are already gone as part of the administration process at the hands of Deloitte’s Vaughan Strawbridge.

Virgin chief executive Paul Scurrah says he cannot guarantee more won’t go as border restrictions keep air travel to a minimum.

The company’s image wasn’t helped earlier this year when dealmakers decided to celebrate Bain’s successful $3.5bn purchase of the airline with cocktails at Circular Quay fine diner Cafe Sydney. For good measure, the moment was turned into a photo op for the Australian Financial Review. Good luck finding that picture now.

Still, the latest one was an unforced error.

Those close to Hrdlicka tell Margin Call the limo service — in a perfect shade of a2 white, mind you — wasn’t pre-planned. What had been ordered was a van. On arrival at Brisbane that evening, however, she was ­irritated to see a limo pull up.

No photo-op on this occasion, although this column’s correspondents were well placed to take an impromptu photograph nevertheless.

Hrdlicka is a notoriously tough operator, and has a difficult relationship with Virgin’s key unions after her time in executive positions at Qantas and Jetstar. Her time at a2 Milk was also short-lived. She departed that gig in December last year, having only begun in July 2018, passing the reins to Geoff Babidge.

Illustration: Rod Clement

For the record, Virgin isn’t alone in splashing out while anxiety-filled staff wait for news about their jobs. Sources say senior Qantas employees were seen at a champagne-fuelled knees-up lunch at Rose Bay, Sydney establishment Catalina celebrating the airline’s last 747 flight in late July.

Board push and shove

Veteran director and former rugby great Michael Hawker is used to a little shoving on the field, but when it comes to the corporate realm it cuts a little deeper.

A week after taking up a role with John McFarlane’s Westpac board, Hawker parted ways with Macquarie’s board, with his exit date pulled forward by a month.

His departure after more than 10 years was flagged early in September, as a means for Hawker — also a director at Bupa, Washington H. Soul Pattinson and a board member at the MCA — to weigh up any alternative board positions.

Initially, he was given a two-month runway, to finish up by October, but on Wednesday Macquarie said it had revised its plans to now be effective as of “the end of September”.

“Thirty days has September …” Yep, if we’ve got our jingles right the exit was effective immediately.

Macquarie pointed to Hawker’s defection to Westpac as the basis for the boot, which leaves chairman Peter Warne with a nine-member board including Woolies chairman Gordon Cairns and Jillian Broadbent, who replaces Hawker as chair of the remuneration committee and is also a fellow director with Cairns at Woolies, too.

With departing Westpac director Alison Deans in place until the group’s AGM in December, Hawker effectively scores an extra month of holidays — perhaps a good time to ponder the bank’s recent $1.3bn Austrac fine, or tune into the musings of his former chairman at Macquarie, Kevin McCann.

Talking to Gregory Robinson in the latest episode of Blenheim Partners’ No Limitations podcast, McCann opened up about his time as chair at the millionaires’ factory alongside former chief executives Allan Moss and Nicholas Moore, and how he stepped in when founding chair David Clarke fought illness in the middle of the GFC.

“Being a professional director is now a full-time role,” McCann said, reflecting on the evolution of directorships from the times when they were “retired and generally male”.

“There is a limit on how many roles you can take and still fulfil the task properly. There are some notable examples of too many board roles … two major boards is an absolute stretch.”

He held up Macquarie as a prime example of effective leadership and culture, especially its tendency to appoint from within, while singling out the response to Kenneth Hayne’s royal commission as “blurring the lines” between the board and management. “If you’re in a highly regulated industry like the financial sector, there is a danger that the regulators and the legislation is requiring directors to get involved in management,” McCann said.

Asked if it was too much involvement, he quickly replied: “I think we are getting very close to that situation, yes.”

Mike’s TV reality

With a packed calendar of public, albeit virtual, appearances, it was only time before Atlassian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes tested the reality-TV space.

We do hear there’s an opening in the market, but while it wasn’t quite Keeping up with the Cannon-Brookeses, he was thrust into game show central on Wednesday, going deep on climate change for the Smart Energy Summit with The Bachelor and Masked Singer host Osher Gunsberg and comedian Dan Ilic.

A TV host, a Satarist and a Software Engineer walked into a #SmartEnergySummit...

Best zoom call ever. pic.twitter.com/lc5wy0Y0So

— Osher Günsberg (@oshergunsberg) September 30, 2020

Launching the chat with a Who Wants to be a Millionaire-themed lightning round (like Mike needs any help in that department with net worth of about $18bn), the speakers were quick to take a dig at Energy Minister Angus Taylor, before getting to the bones of the discussion on how they have used their profiles for good.

“I think I’ve been lucky enough to get myself in a position where when I speak my mind, people listen, which is great,” Cannon-Brookes said, going on to describe personal sustainability investments with wife Annie of more than a billion dollars.

He has been throwing his energy into renewables more than ever in recent weeks. He appeared on a fiery Q&A on the ABC on Monday night, and is reportedly deep in talks with fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk about developing a replacement power source for the Liddell coal-fired power plant.

Mike Cannon- Brookes, CEO, Atlassian. Picture Rohan Kelly

He’ll also be appearing on the final episode of The Australian’s technology podcast Forward Slash with our very own David Swan in coming weeks.

Gold minnow exit

While we are on the subject of technology workarounds in the pandemic, save a thought for goldmining minnow BBX Minerals, whose former chief and director Jeff McKenzie called it quits at the firm citing “logistical difficulties”.

With its mines dotted across the Amazonas state in Brazil, its head office in Perth and his own home in Christchurch, perhaps three call-in locations was too difficult to co-ordinate for the group.

Not a bad time to exit too, with shares recently hitting a highest of 7.1c apiece.

He leaves the group in the hands of chief Andre Douchane and chair Michael Schmulian.

Perhaps they can take a few Zoom conferencing tips from rare earths miner Lynas, whose chief Amanda Lacaze hasn’t stepped foot in the group’s West Australian or Malaysian operations since mid-February.