John Brumby courted with Mike Baird for Scyne chair role; Reynolds’ canny investments

Scyne Advisory’s recruitment talks with former premier John Brumby are said to be reaching their conclusion. Picture: Alan Barber

Scyne Advisory is the needlessly pretentious name chosen for the recasting of PwC’s terminally ill government consulting business. But what’s a name without a face?

All everyone wants to know is who’ll chair this touched new enterprise, and instead the company breadcrumbed everybody on Tuesday with Andrew Greenwood, a former federal court judge who’s fresh off the Queensland bench, renowned for his “prodigious work ethic”, passion for whippets, and who will head up the board’s probity and ethics subcommittee. Scintillating stuff, truly.

The reason for all this distraction is that negotiations with John Brumby remain very much afoot. Margin Call can reveal the former Victorian premier and La Trobe University chancellor is in discussions to be named as Scyne’s chair, which should lend some gravitas to the battling ­little entity, a subject of much ­derision by its peers and competitors.

These talks are said to be reaching their conclusion and, pending any unforeseen circumstances, Brumby should be announced in short order – unless the company insists on teasing everyone with more safe grey suit announcements.

Brumby’s contract at La Trobe doesn’t end until March 2025, so presumably he’ll keep his job while navigating Scyne out of the infamy from which it was created. His Labor affiliations should also go a way to speeding the tissue-repair so desperately required with the Albanese government. Plus, we hear he wasn’t the only politician to be courted.

Former NSW premier Mike Baird may in fact have been Allegro’s first choice.

It seems Allegro’s Adrian Loader, kingmaker of the Scyne board’s composition, held discussions with former NSW premier and HammondCare CEO Mike Baird and it would seem he was actually the company’s first choice. Another ex-politician tapped for talks was former Queensland premier Anna Bligh, who’s understood to have declined the offer.

There was much enthusiasm for the idea on both sides, but apparently Baird’s contractual arrangements at the aged-care provider ended up proving the fly in the ointment – he couldn’t do both, with months still to serve on his contract.

As it happens, Baird is also the chair of Cricket Australia, and he’s been over at Lord’s getting tangled up in that mard with the Brits, which is why he was out of range when we contacted him on Tuesday. No word of reply from Brumby, either, when we came knocking.

Scyne Advisory. Apparently the name wasn’t exactly an immediate hit with the boffins who brainstormed this ye olde malformation of High German and Middle Dutch. Apparently there were almost a dozen alternatives bandied about before they landed on Scyne, with Citizen Advisory said to have been spitballed for a period.

There’s a rich irony there, of course, given PwC’s rather crap behaviour as a corporate citizen.

Meanwhile, Allegro continues to implement its plans for Scyne via the newly created Bell Bidco Pty Ltd, which was registered with the regulator on June 30, with no fewer than 11 company names reserved, all of them based around Scyne Advisory. No mere partnership structure on offer from here.

Operatives from law firm Herbert Smith Freehills on Monday also lodged trademark applications for the names Scyne and Scyne Advisory, although no corporate logo or branding just yet.

Family affairs

West Australian senator Linda Reynolds might seem singularly focused on salvaging her reputation from the wreckage of the Brittany Higgins rape allegations, but it would appear the former defence minister still has some attention left over for the management of her personal investments. It’s very much a family affair, too.

Reynolds has been off building a nest egg by falling in behind the career of her successful brother, Cameron Reynolds. She’s already a shareholder in VolitionRX, a medical science company that he runs, although its stock price is down more than 40 per cent on a year-to-date measure.

WA Senator Linda Reynolds. Picture: Martin Ollman

Elsewhere, it would appear Reynolds is directing cash into another company her sibling is involved with – the Australian-founded higher education tech company Pathify, for which her brother is a non-exec director.

Based in Colorado, the firm has been poised to float on the ASX since at least the start of last year, but that hasn’t eventuated.

It signed a deal with Melbourne’s RMIT in March, perhaps suggesting a revived IPO could be in the works.

Meanwhile, Higgins happened to be in the news on Tuesday, hitting back at her former boss on social media. That was after Reynolds referred Higgins’ compensation package, awarded by the Albanese government, to the newly formed National Anti-Corruption Commission.

 

Intel operations

Andrew Macintosh was hired by corporate advisory CT Group in October to beef up its intelligence offering. He was named director and given a desk in Sydney, but the desire, the demand for corporate espionage services, if we can tap the side of our noses and term it that, is growing at a far more strident pace abroad. Accordingly, Macintosh has been dispatched to Singapore to bolster CT’s regional intel operations, led by local MD Abdul Malik.

And what does CT’s Intelligence Practice do for its clients? They collect “hard-to-source information” for due diligence, asset tracing and dispute resolution. It’s got a whiff of skulduggery about it.

But even with Macintosh gone, the Sydney bureau shan’t be entirely bereft of capable sleuthing thanks to the very recent poaching of Felix McIntyre, formerly an associate director of forensic practice from KPMG. His previous life? McIntyre spent more than 10 years working for the Australian government in intriguing roles that aren’t exactly outlined in detail on his LinkedIn profile, jobs with titles like analyst, senior analyst, assistant director, senior investigator, etc.

Tinker, Tailor, Crosby, Textor? Is that where this is all heading? Apparently there are laws preventing us from saying much more.