Kroger keeping cards close to his chest

ASPIRING Liberal Party president, lawyer, union-buster, ABC director, merchant banker, childcare centre operator — some days it seems like Michael Kroger has done it all.

Last year he even went back to the kiddie-minding business for a second time, as one of the players behind the October float of Think Childcare and Education.

Now the never-ending Tory has written a new chapter in his life. Not only is he contesting for presidency of the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party — he’s having a go at becoming a top-level poker player.

Kroger is to compete in the main event of one of the world’s biggest poker tournaments, the Aussie Millions, which kicks off at James Packer’s Melbourne money pit Crown Casino on Sunday. (Yes, that’s the same pokies palace where Kroger’s ex, Ann Peacock, is PR wrangler.)

Entry to the main event usually costs $10,600 to enter, but Margin Call understands Kroger made his way to the big table by winning a $550-a-head qualifying event this month.

Kroger’s had trouble keeping a poker face before — witness his thoroughly enjoyable savaging of former treasurer Peter Costello back in 2012 — but there is a big payday as an incentive. Crown expects the winner of the main event to take home $1.6 million, plus a tasteful diamond-encrusted bracelet.

Kroger didn’t return Margin Call’s phone message.

Golden Rim slapped

AN unexpected surge in the share price of Perth-based gold explorer Golden Rim has earned it a slap from the exchange — and revealed the company knew about positive drill results 10 days before it told the market.

Golden Rim, which is looking for the shiny stuff in Burkina Faso, first became aware its Korongou project was looking good on January 5, but didn’t tell the market until January 15.

At the same time, the share price surged from 0.6c to 0.9c.

Chairman Rick Crabb told Margin Call the delay was because the raw drilling results came in “in dribs and drabs” and needed analysis before deciding they were market sensitive.

“It’s not like something comes in on the email and you say, ‘Geez, I’d better call a trading halt,’” he said. On the 13th, when a poster to market discussion site Hotcopper noted significant buying, saying: “Some news is coming or I’ll eat my boots.”

It may look like word of the strike leaked out from those working on the Rim job, but Crabb said that was “impossible”. “I didn’t even know what the results where until the announcement was being made,” he said.

A-G doubles down

ON a map of Tassie, the courtroom looms large. Free speech is all the rage these days — except in the nation’s southernmost state, where Liberal Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin is doing her best to undo a decade-old deal limiting the right of corporations to sue for defamation (see Margin Call, December 9).

Before last year’s election, the Apple Isle Libs said the move was necessary to squelch pesky greenies who ran “damaging campaigns of misinformation against Tasmanian forestry companies” that “cost many Tasmanian jobs”.

But it risks disaster by undermining robust business reporting and turning Tassie into a magnet for ill-conceived and frivolous defo lawsuits from around Australia.

On Saturday, under the leave-no-doubts headline “DON’T DO IT”, Hobart’s Mercury enlisted an apparently unlikely duo to fight the move: one of Australia’s richest women, Janet Holmes a Court, and Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie, who these days curates arts festival MONA FOMA for gambler David Walsh. Goodwin is doubling down. “Truth is a defence against defamation, so if you are not telling lies and spreading mistruths you will have no reason to fear,” a spokesman said.

Valuations crackdown

THE corporate watchdog’s crackdown on bloated goodwill valuations, foreshadowed by The Australian in November, is reaping dividends. Perennial market straggler GoConnect is to impair goodwill by $4.3m in its half-year results, ASIC said yesterday. Margin Call tips more will follow.