Latitude listing a bridge too Fahour

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Ahmed Fahour’s dreams of listed greatness have collapsed with the failed $3bn Latitude Financial IPO.

Even the LeBron James of corporate Australia couldn’t stop the souffle’s second demise, a spectacular faltering that was first flagged online on Tuesday by Margin Call.

Also in a heap is the $45m payday the former Aussie Post chief was in line for until the organisers of Latitude’s second attempt at a float called the mess off.

Once again, Fahour, who started at the Mike Tilley-chaired company in October last year amid plans for the IPO, will have to settle for running an operation that sits just outside the listed limelight.

The humiliating Latitude float flop is the stuff of an investment banker’s or celebrity CEO’s nightmare.

No listing also means no multi-million-dollar fees for the advisers.

The shock collapse will go down as a blemish on Fahour’s glittering corporate life, of the type not seen since Michael Chaney a decade ago picked Cameron Clyne, not his then fellow National Australia Bank executive Fahour, to be the CEO of NAB.

Last night the float’s joint lead managers UBS, Goldman Sachs and Macquarie Capital pulled the shutters as it became apparent that prudent fund managers and savvy mums and dads saw limited potential in the Latitude offer.

Margin Call broke the news online on Tuesday afternoon that the offer, which had already been repriced twice in recent days and had been pulled about this time last year, was on a knife’s edge and was poised to be pulled ahead of the offer’s 5pm bookbuild closure.

Organisers to the offer at lunch time told the market that the bookbuild was filled at $1.78 a share, but tellingly said this was only the case if retail brokers could confirm that they could sell $330m of Latitude stock to mum and dad investors.

They couldn’t — retail investors have not historically done well buying into private equity-backed ASX floats such as Latitude — and a mad, dying-hours scramble by the JLMs to get the stock away failed.

Withdrawal of the offer, which was set to be this market’s biggest float of the year, has ­significant implications for other pre-Christmas floats, including the likes of Zoo Retail, the parent company of Boost Juice.

The unfolding scenario is in stark contrast to this week’s stunning sharemarket debut of David Di Pilla’s HomeCo, whose stock is sitting comfortably above its $3.35 issue price.

On the strength of former UBS investment banker Di Pilla’s rich-lister-heavy contact book and associates of other wealthy billionaire foundation investors, HomeCo’s allocation of fresh capital was made almost entirely to wealthy family office investors.

Float sources told Margin Call vendors Deutsche, Varde and KKR were not prepared to reprice Latitude’s shares below $1.78 each just to get the float away. Will they dare try for a third time?

Friends in rich places

It’s been a tough few months for freshly minted Victorian senator Sarah Henderson.

In May the former ABC journo lost the marginal lower house seat of Corangamite to Labor’s Libby Coker in what was one of the federal election’s hardest-fought local battles.

Sarah Henderson. Picture: David Geraghtyn.

Then there was the bruising and highly personal battle with Liberal Party stalwart Greg Mirrabella, the husband of former member for Indi Sophie Mirabella, to take over the Senate slot vacated by former communications minister Mitch Fifield, who was lured from the parliament with Australia’s ambassadorship to the United Nations in New York.

For four months that left Henderson, who first won the Victorian surf coast seat in 2013, with plenty to do but without a paying job to help keep the financial wolves from her Barwon Heads door. Thankfully along with some pretty powerful political backers — Henderson’s heavyweight referees for the senate included Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett and former party president Michael Kroger — the 55-year-old had some wealthy supporters prepared to stump up for the pollie when cashflow got tight.

And they don’t come much richer in Victoria than Geelong’s Costa family, led by 81-year-old fruit and veg patriarch Frank Costa, who is estimated by The Oz’s resident wealth expert John Stensholt to be worth almost $700m.

Frank Costa. Picture: Glenn Ferguson

Margin Call can reveal that a vehicle associated with the Costa family, Ajax Capital Pty Ltd, assisted Henderson with a personal loan after the May election, which the new senator has now had to disclose on her inaugural statement of interests in the upper house.

Ajax is no stranger to the Victorian division of the party, having donated $105,000 to the Libs in four payments in the 2017-18 financial year.

The relationship between the pollie and family goes back some way, with Henderson personally thanking Frank Costa in her maiden speech to the parliament in 2013.

The company is run out of the Costa’s Geelong family office, Costa Asset Management, which is chaired by Frank’s brother Robert Costa, 66.

CAM execs and directors also populate the board of Ajax Capital, including former Costa operations general manager Gary Meadows, the CEO of CAM Liza Whitmore, CAM general counsel Rhonda Arnott and CAM’s head of investments Ryan Illingworth.

When we called the Costas yesterday for details of the financial support to their former federal member turned state senator, Illingworth was reluctant to talk.

“We have no comment about that company,” he said.

Margin Call gathers the personal loan, which was secured after the election and appropriately disclosed on the register, was granted on commercial terms with full documentation.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Liu’s new minder

As forecast, change has come to the office of Gladys Liu.

Margin Call can confirm that former Victorian state member Graham Watt — a carpet cleaner turned Member for Burwood turned former Member for Burwood — is no longer on Liu’s staff.

Watt was put on the Morrison government’s endangered species list after his boss Liu, the Member for Chisholm, went on Andrew Bolt’s Sky News show without the permission of the Prime Minister’s Office.

“Someone decided Gladys, a Padawan learner, should take on a Jedi Master,” a Star Wars-minded Liberal explained to us after that September snafu.

In Watt’s place, having received a tick from Simon Birmingham’s government staffing committee, is Francois Schiefler, who has been a foot soldier in both the Australian Army and then the Liberal Party.

Until the May election, Schiefler was a staffer in the office of Michael Keenan, who slunk out of parliament after his inglorious role in the failed Dutton putsch.

Meanwhile, the search continues for additional Liberal staffing help for Liu, preferably with the Mandarin skills required to engage with the circa 10 per cent of emails we’re told are sent to her parliamentary email account in the Middle Kingdom’s official language.