Latitude’s Ahmed Fahour ties the knot again
Is that wedding bells we hear?
Word has reached Margin Call’s hot desk that recent weeks have seen one of corporate Australia’s higher-profile (and sometimes controversial) chief executives tie the knot with his partner in a quiet ceremony planned amid Melbourne’s excruciating COVID lockdown.
Congratulations to Latitude Financial boss Ahmed Fahour and new wife Hannah Holmes, these days known as Hannah Fahour.
It’s the second marriage for Fahour, whose ultimate wedding present might be the opportunity to take Latitude to market after a couple of pre-COVID false starts in floating the group on the ASX.
The nuptials, we are told, took place at home last month, in what we hear was a small, private ceremony in front of immediate family.
We told you of the betrothal about this time last year, after Fahour and Holmes were first snapped as a couple at the 2019 Melbourne Cup carnival at Flemington.
However, it’s not all that the former Aussie Post chief has been planning in recent months, with Fahour’s representative seeking local council approval for almost $1m worth of works to his historic home on Hawthorn’s Kinkora Road, approval for which is yet to be received.
Fahour purchased the 1887 Victorian mansion in early 2018 for $16.25m.
Looks like there might also be plans for the couple to spread their wings east in the direction of the Mornington Peninsula, where Fahour has previously owned a holiday home that was sold at the end of 2018 for $10.5m as part of the division of assets in his separation from his former wife Dionne.
In what has been a busy period for Fahour, at the start of last month he created a new entity, Coastline Sorrento Pty Ltd, of which he is sole director and shareholder.
Wedding bells and auction hammers — who ever said financial services was dull.
Andrews theories
There have been plenty of conspiracy theories swirling around Melbourne circles on the circumstances around Dan Andrews’ nasty tumble.
While the Premier remains at the Alfred recovering from broken ribs and spinal injuries, and with deputy James Merlino set to be holding the fort for as long as three months, pundits have been quick to speculate just what Andrews, Cath and the kids were up to while on the Mornington Peninsula.
One such theory doing the rounds has been that Andrews had been down south as a guest of none other than trucking magnate and good friend Lindsay Fox — with some going so far as to suggest the Premier was taking his own advice and “getting on the beers” at the Portsea compound.
Of course, the two would have plenty to chat about over a drink, with Fox’s offer to build a quarantine camp at his Avalon Airport still very much live, along with that of fellow billionaire John Wagner further north in Toowoomba.
Andrews has so far publicly supported the Fox bid, with proposals now very much in the hands of Scott Morrison and the Prime Minister’s national cabinet. Which takes us back to the veracity of any such rumours in the first place.
Fox’s team was quick to quash any suggestion the two spent the weekend together, noting that the billionaire was in metro Melbourne while Andrews and his family were taking a break for the long weekend.
The Premier’s accommodation, and those pesky slippery stairs, are said to be just a holiday rental bankrolled at his own expense.
Perhaps next time he’ll book a place with a ramp instead.
Mansion spruce-up
Imported AMP boss Francesco De Ferrari might have missed out on the retention bonus paid to many of his colleagues at the shrunken financial services shop in 2020, but that doesn’t seem to have diminished the US-born exec’s passion for life in the Harbour City.
As revealed in AMP’s annual report, which was released to the market on Wednesday, the AMP chief took home just his $2.2m base salary in the insurer’s most recent financial year, but was awarded no short-term bonus or other incentives in a year that COVID-19 smashed the group’s operations and brought to light several misconduct complaints.
That was from total pay of $3.5m the year before.
Still, the differential is unlikely to bite too hard into the 51-year-old’s lifestyle, with the executive and wife Elisabetta De Ferrari-Wicki requiring no mortgage to pay $7.5m in the middle of last year for the six-bedroom historic mansion Weeroona, on Woollahra’s Rosemont Avenue.
No loan repayments then for the expat couple, who have five children, and plenty of bedrooms to go around. The home was purchased in Elisabetta’s name.
But even historic piles need upgrading, with the wealth manager applying to and receiving approval from Woollahra Council towards the end of last year for $650,000 worth of alterations and additions to the home in a project that is being driven by Paddington-based architect Michael Robilliard.
De Ferrari would be hoping an actual bonus this year will help pay for that.
A Sonic tonic
The nation’s secretary of the Department of Health, Brendan Murphy, has conceded that Healthcare Australia’s mishap with the double dosing of two elderly patients in Queensland had slowed the national rollout, but it has also provided opportunity for some.
Addressing the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 and its chair Katy Gallagher, the doctor noted that the recent appointment of the listed Sonic Healthcare was an attempt to speed up the deployment of jabs across the aged-care industry, after governance issues put HCA’s role on ice.
While Murphy assured the committee the Crescent Capital Partners-owned HCA had been brought back up to scratch, there was no denying that the bungled jab had caused significant disruption.
“They made some significant changes including in their senior management team,” Murphy said of their path to redemption, referring of course to chief Jason Cartwright being forced to step aside.
He went on to add that not only chief nurse Deb Thoms had been embedded into the project to oversee clinical governance, but also the health department’s own staff and other consultants.
No doubt a costly exercise.
Still, the debacle has proved lucrative for Sonic, and the head of its clinical services arm, Ged Foley.
While the quantum of the contract was not disclosed to the committee, Murphy and his colleague Caroline Edwards noted that Sonic had been tapped only after the early delays.
Lucky for some.
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