Last resort: Clive fails in bid to block Palmer Coolum case
Mining magnate Clive Palmer has lost his bid to block funding for a class action over the much-troubled Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast.
The Federal Court ruled this week that special levies being garnered from disaffected resort villa owners to back the class action were legal when Justice Andrew Greenwood rejected the interim interlocutory application.
The Palmer-backed Coeur de Lion Investments (CDLI) seeks to bar the special levies, which will fund the class action that seeks orders to compel Palmer to purchase the remaining shares in the resort at a fair value.
CDLI filed a lawsuit seeking to starve the class action of funding, with Peter Dunning QC representing Palmer.
The resort, which lost its five-star status after it fell into a dilapidated state, was envisaged as a golfing destination with a dinosaur theme park, known as Palmersaurus.
Margin Call assumes the portrait of the mining magnate hung in the lobby following its name change from the Hyatt Regency Coolum International Resort has long gone in what the court was told has been a “war of attrition”.
GAYTM withdrawal
There’ll be no glamorous ATM on the Mardi Gras route tomorrow night following the closure of the ANZ’s Oxford Street, Darlinghurst branch last year.
With feathers and rhinestones aplenty, the bank premises pioneered the award-winning GAYTMs campaign that kicked off back in 2014 with a social media flourish in the early days of Instagram, a few years before the now-pervasive cashless iPhone tap and go.
Now months after the ANZ branch closure, Eric Lundberg, leasing listing agent at TGC, still has the empty ground floor space available.
ANZ remains a principal partner for Mardi Gras, which celebrates LGBTIQ+ inclusion. 2020 marks 14 years of ANZ’s partnership with the festival.
This year ANZ has instead taken a billboard on Taylor Square which advises that “Boys Should Never Wear Dresses”, with LGBTIQ+ graffiti artist David Lee Pereira disarming the comment by adding, “Without A Killer Pair of Heels”.
It promotes the #LoveSpeech film that TBWA\Melbourne and Revolver/Will O’Rourke produced calling attention to the effects of hurtful language.
“With unkind, cruel and damaging comments directed at the community every single day, we think it’s time for more #LoveSpeech,” said Sweta Mehra, chief marketing officer for ANZ.
Elliott and Elton
Speaking of bling, that brings us to ANZ boss Shayne Elliott.
You’d never know it during bank hours, but ANZ’s head teller doesn’t mind a sprinkling of the ageing rock star-look after dark.
A Margin Call spy eyed the 56-year-old, who’s now in his fifth year running the $73bn bank, letting it all hang out at Elton John’s Melbourne concert last Saturday night as part of the music legend’s Farewell Yellow BrickRoad tour.
Drawing attention was Elliott’s statement footwear, with his otherwise black shoes notable for the gigantic, spectacular gold buckles.
Date with destiny
February 29s are an unusual occurrence, and always remind Margin Call of a bankruptcy application that failed.
It was a property developer who escaped Westpac’s bankruptcy in a 1990 Supreme Court ruling that still gets talked about around Sydney’s long-lunching drinking holes.
A look at the court ruling takes one back to history class.
“When Julius Caesar decreed that from the year now known as 45BC onwards there should be adopted the Julian calendar, with its provision for recurring bissextile or leap years, he not only set the scene for a well-known Gilbertian jest; he also set the scene for the problem posed by the present case,” his honour Justice James Burchett noted.
“For the basic question is whether, in calculating a proportionate amount of interest due at a yearly rate, the year in question being a leap year, is it permissible to convert the yearly sum to a daily rate by dividing by 365, or whether it is essential to include the intercalary day, thus making the divisor 366.”
Clubb’s bankruptcy notice claimed $427,938.29 and $311,000 interest, with the obligation to pay at a percentage “yearly”. Being the era of ever-rising interest rates, they ranged from 15 per cent to 19.5 per cent during the period that included a leap year, 1988.
After doing his sums, his honour ruled the error totalled $213, so the bankruptcy notice was invalid, given the sum exceeded the amount.
Clubb secured victory. There was another judgment in 1991 where a debt was overstated by $33 and the bankruptcy against a Double Bay restaurateur was similarly invalid.
None since then that Margin Call is aware of, which suggests banks are alert to the loophole.
Oh, and that bit of Gilbertian jest was The Pirates of Penzance and its character Frederic the pirate apprentice, who was indentured with the pirates until his 21st birthday, but technically going by birthdays was only five, and must serve another 63 years.
Before his time
It was the birthday this week of Steve Outtrim, best remembered for his success in the earliest dotcom years.
The creator of Sausage Software and its flagship product the HotDog is back in New Zealand as entrepreneur in residence at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The University of Auckland after 25 years living between Melbourne and San Francisco.
The internet pioneer quit Sausage in 2000 with around $60m before the dotcom crash.
Deemed the second-youngest CEO of a public company on its 1996 ASX listing, Outtrim told print media scribes the industry spoke of ‘‘internet time” where 12 ordinary months equalled seven internet years, reflecting the unrelenting pace of growth.
That made him 161 years on listing. And presumably 329 now since he was born in 1973.
Having recently founded zMint, Outtrim reckons the old ways of commerce are too slow and too hard, and sees an exciting new era where fintech innovation will transform society as much as the internet did, especially through Initial Coin Offerings. “The blockchain is going to revolutionise the world,” he says.
Turning the page
The former NAB chief of staff Rosemary Rogers wasn’t required to be at yesterday’s brief Sydney Downing Centre court mention.
Judge Chris O’Brien stood the District Court matter over as the legal teams were still to go through a “voluminous” 73 pages, which will determine the facts to be presented to his honour for sentencing.
“And reduce it I hope,” his honour suggested.
There was also a brief reference to the yet-to-be-lodged plea of her co-accused, Helen Rosamond.
Rogers has pleaded guilty to 38 charges of dishonesty in dealing with NAB funds.
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Artist who featured Hezbollah leader dropped as Australia’s pick for Venice jaunt
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