Lindsay Fox knows how to keep on trucking
Billionaire trucking magnate Lindsay Fox didn’t come down in the last shower.
Based on the tumultuous year just past, the 83-year-old Linfox founder, last estimated to be worth $4.18bn according to this newspaper’s The List, has been fostering his relationship with Victoria Premier Dan Andrews for some months.
We guess you don’t get to be one of Australia’s richest blokes without being able to sniff out a potentially lucrative deal like quarantining returning travellers at Fox’s vast Avalon Airport.
As far back as late March last year as the coronavirus crisis was taking hold in the southern state, Andrews was texting his chief of staff Lissie Ratcliff the news that Linfox was happy to help with hotel arrangements, as revealed at the hotel quarantine inquiry.
Then in April, Andrews was a guest at the Toorak resident’s “virtual” 83rd birthday party. Not even Victoria’s billionaires could dodge Andrews’ tough lockdown.
By October, Fox was one of just a few business people to back Andrews and his harsh restrictions when other corporate leaders were publicly slamming the government, with Fox also praising the Premier’s leadership during the crisis.
“He’s had the balls to make decisions and stay with them, when 99 out of 100 people would have conceded a month ago,” Fox said amid Victoria’s health and economic crisis.
“I’ve always respected his tough-line approach to getting things done.”
Indeed, the Foxes have first experience with the unpalatable prospect of quarantine and the sort of creature comforts that returning Aussies might enjoy when they touch down on Avalon soil.
Mid-last year after Queensland had closed its border to Victorians following a surge in coronavirus cases, logistics scion Peter Fox, 58, and his family dodged the need to quarantine at a hotel by proving he had leased a waterfront home on the Gold Coast and was a “new” Queensland resident.
The home was owned by world champion Australian motorcycle rider Mick Doohan, who is reportedly a long-time Fox family friend with business interests at Essendon Fields airport, which is also owned by Linfox.
Doohan’s Palm Beach mansion, a world away from the Foxes’ Toorak pile, should provide an ideal blueprint for the type of accommodation the billionaire family intends to offer weary travellers.
Spreading the load
But you could never accuse the billionaire Fox family of putting all their eggs in the one political basket when it comes to blue versus red.
Look who Lindsay Fox’s other son, David Fox, appears to have just jumped into bed with — millionaire former Liberal Party federal treasurer Andrew Burnes and his listed Helloworld Travel.
So that’s both sides of the political divide covered.
Just a couple of weeks ago Burnes and Fox lodged the paperwork for a new joint venture called FB Freight Pty Ltd, which is 70 per cent-controlled by Helloworld and 30 per cent-controlled by scion Fox’s DEF Venture Capital Pty Ltd.
To the Fox family, transport and logistics is bread and butter, but it’s not a new pursuit for Helloworld, either.
The $342m listed travel group already has a freight operation: Show Freight, which provides concert tour and entertainment logistics for local and international artists.
Margin Call contacted Helloworld chief financial officer David Hall to flesh out details on the new venture, but didn’t hear back before deadline.
Premier Dan Andrews’ Victorian lockdown meant there was no one answering the phone at the travel outfit, either — maybe that’s part of why revenue’s down.
Burnes, of course, is also a good mate of former Australian ambassador to the US and former Liberal federal treasurer Joe Hockey, who has been a top 20 shareholder of Helloworld.
But how’s this for timing — a few days after FB Freight was born, it was revealed that Burnes’s Helloworld was seeking to impose pay cuts of up to 20 per cent on employees when JobKeeper ends in March, based on cuts to revenue due to the global pandemic.
How odd: enough funds for new ventures, it seems, but just not enough for the existing operations.
Tennis boss absent
As the finals of the Australian Open draw nearer, it seems the crowds may not be the only thing missing. A key figurehead of the organisation, none other than chair and board president Jayne Hrdlicka, is also absent.
The boss at Tennis Australia was courtside at Melbourne Park on Friday, but jumped on an afternoon flight back to Brisbane ahead of Dan Andrews’ latest snap five-day lockdown imposed at 11.59pm on Friday.
It is not the first time Hrdlicka, also Virgin Australia’s chief executive, has skipped her home town for the Sunshine State and Virgin’s HQ.
Recall that in October, ahead of her elevation to the top job, she made headlines after she was picked up at Brisbane Airport by no less than a white stretch limo. Now several months into the job, it seems the grand gestures have toned down a touch.
Margin Call hears the chief exec made a more low-key entry into Brisbane this time around, following necessary government advice and isolating until she received a negative COVID-19 test result.
She is now working remotely for Tennis Australia, according to representatives at Virgin.
While we are all for the work-from-home switch, that might prove a little difficult for Hrdlicka, who, as chair, is usually the one to present the trophies to the likes of last year’s winners Novak Djokovic or Sofia Kenin.
Doing the honours
Perhaps chief Craig Tiley will do the honours solo. After all, he has been the only one to front the media this tournament, mostly in relation to player quarantine and now the tennis “bubble”.
Of course, there still is time for Jane Hrdlicka to make the dash south, and if Tennis Australia’s booking site is anything to go by, the organisation is erring on the optimistic side. Tickets to Thursday’s semi-finals at Rod Laver Arena remain on sale online, with night session passes costing up to $715 a pop.
After the COVID dramas this year, and bushfires and Margaret Court to contend with the year before, Hrdlicka will be wishing for the glory days back, when her most pressing question was what to wear when sitting next to Vogue’s Anna Wintour.
California dreaming
Penfolds’ jetsetting winemakerPeter Gago has been earthbound for longer than he can remember.
For a winemaker who usually spends half the year, conservatively, flying between vintages in Australia, the US and Europe, as well as launch events as far afield as Beijing, New York, New Orleans and Moscow, it’s been quite the change of pace, and Gago is realistic about the prospect of getting his boots dirty in a French field any time soon.
Gago laments that the shift to the virtual realm means “you can’t walk in between the rows”, but on the other hand “the wine has a magnetic appeal, but so, also, does living”. Gago, who is releasing Penfolds’ first “California Collection” of predominantly Napa Valley/South Australia-blend reds on Wednesday, hosted Andrew and Nicola Forrest for a tasting of the range recently, when they were in town to look over their recent purchase, RM Williams.
The Forrests were in the mix when Treasury Wine Estates chief Tim Ford had Penfolds on sale last year, but the proposed sale process was pulled after China started playing hardball with wine tariffs last year.
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