John McFarlane moves in on Lindsay Maxsted

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

It’s been an epic week for our $350bn-plus four pillars.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg jawboned the big bank bosses into doing their bit for Australia and passing on Reserve Bank chief Philip Lowe’s 25 basis point rate cut in full.

There was the prospect of them paying more to help keep the Morrison government’s budget somewhere near balance, while CSL dethroned Matt Comyn’s CBA as the nation’s biggest locally listed stock.

Former NSW premier Mike Baird pulled the plug on the now Ross McEwan-led National Australia Bank in pursuit of his own top job as bank execs across the country were grounded thanks to the unfolding COVID-19 global health crisis.

And the weekend sees the changing of the guard at Westpac, with incoming chair John McFarlane attending his inaugural bank board meeting in Sydney over two days as outgoing chair Lindsay Maxsted leads his last.

Maxsted will have been in the prestigious $700,000-a-year gig for 12 years by the time he leaves on March 31.

On April 1 McFarlane is taking over the $81bn institution as acting Westpac chief Peter King navigates the fallout from Austrac’s allegations of millions of breaches of anti-money laundering laws.

That is, McFarlane is taking over Westpac amid arguably the biggest crisis in the bank’s 200-plus year history.

Global headhunters from Heidrich & Struggles are helping Westpac find a new chief, with Baird’s sudden exit from NAB stoking speculation that he could be a contender.

But the ex-pollie’s lack of deep retail banking experience means he’s unlikely to get the top job from McFarlane, much like how things played out via Phil Chronican at the smaller $69bn NAB.

McFarlane, Margin Call hears, has been spending some time searching for a bolthole to buy in Sydney, which would be in addition to the $6m-plus (mortgage-free) apartment he owns with wife Anne in Toorak.

Last October, the McFarlanes returned to Melbourne with plans for retirement after four years based in London while he was chair of Barclays.

But soon after that Maxsted came calling, shared tea with the career banker and asked him to take over as Westpac’s chair.

The coming weeks will see a series of farewells for Maxsted, including a large gathering with staff and intimate send-off by his board.

Then there’ll be plenty of time for the 65-year-old to tend the new turf at his own Toorak home, where the soil is far less toxic than that Maxsted is dealing with in his enduring role as chair of Dan Andrew’s favourite infrastructure partner Transurban.

Magic Mike’s move

Ross McEwan in, former NSW premier and National Australia Bank top office contender Mike Baird out.

Baird, who had been with NAB for three years running the consumer bank, walks away with a portfolio of fully paid bank shares worth just under $500,000.

Unclear, however, is the status of 67,888 NAB performance rights Baird has been awarded. At the current bank share price they would be worth just under $1.6m.

Keep in mind performance hurdles aren’t really being met in the sector right now, so don’t expect big numbers flowing to Baird to be disclosed in NAB’s next annual report.

Baird’s pay last year was cash of $1.1m for a total of $1.7m, about a third of which was performance-based.

Margin Call hears there is no imminent retirement likely, nor any return to political life.

That rules out a run for Tony Abbott’s former long-held federal seat of Warringah to take on recently installed independent Zali Steggall, where the Libs’ new NSW senator Andrew Bragg is starting to make his presence felt.

Baird wants to run something in his own right and is giving himself the best chance to do that rather than be locked in under McEwan and the new CEO’s five-year strategy.

And Baird appears to need to keep working — his political career did not entitle him to a post-parliament pension, nor any perks such as staff, an office or free travel, after entitlements for former MPs were scaled back in 2007. In the interim, there’ll be time for a surf and his roles on the boards of Cricket NSW and the Simon Jackman-led US Studies Centre.

The former Liberal pollie will also maintain link to the bank via an outstanding almost $4m loan taken out towards Baird and his wife Kerryn’s purchase in 2017 of a $3.6m clifftop home in North Curl Curl.

Pokie king’s punt

The brave are taking their chances to bolster their positions in the stockmarket rollercoaster. The latest opportunist is pokie billionaire Bruce Mathieson, who has procured $1.17m in the healthcare stock Mayne Pharma over the past week.

He’s been a board member since it was known as Halcygen Pharmaeuticals.

Chaired by his Woolies mate Roger Corbett, Mayne Pharma saw its stock dive last month, not on coronavirus fears, but its 17 per cent revenue dip in the December half. It’s now trading at seven-year lows. Mayne Pharma CEO Scott Richards said the result was “disappointing” as it faced competition from generic products, especially in the US.

But Mathieson is banking on recovery, buying 3.6 million shares, which takes his holding to nearly 100 million shares worth $330m.

His latest purchases came between 31c and 33c per share.

The 76-year-old has been buying shares since 2009 in Mayne Pharma, which had a peak value of $1.5bn in 2016.

Nike naming rights

Could Nike run from the Blues to the Pies? We told you ahead of the official departure of Holden from our shores that the Collingwood AFL players were likely to have to start thinking about giving back their much-loved Holden SUVs.

Margin Call speculated another car company would take over naming rights at the Holden Centre. Elon Musk’s Tesla roared into favouritism, but of course it has never needed to spend anything on advertising.

The latest whisper is that Nike could take the naming rights.

They already do the Pies footwear, with the jumpers by Australian apparel company ISC.

Nike have recently ended their two-decade long sponsorship with the Blues, who have gone with Puma in a decade-long deal, and one of the biggest in AFL history.

The Magpies’ association with Holden dates back to 2013, but the name has adorned the club’s headquarters since 2015.

The original deal was for three years, at around $3m a year.

The deal was extended in 2018 with the club expecting it to still run through the 2020 season, but with a bit more contra than initially agreed.

Holden’s pending exit comes as the brand has managed just 4008 new sales this calendar year to date. It has fallen to 12th position, sitting between German giants Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

Eddie McGuire’s Collingwood moved in to the Olympic swimming precinct in 2004, which was known as the Lexus Centre until 2010 before the then Gail Kelly’s Westpac got the rights.