Little change at Nomad restaurants despite Rebecca Yazbek apology for husband Al’s anti-Semitic display
All well and good for Rebecca Yazbek to issue a grovelling apology over her husband’s fondness for casual anti-Semitism.
But what good are words without deeds?
Yazbek emailed suppliers, staff and beloved customers on Wednesday effectively begging them to come back to her restaurants. The venues have pretty much been dropped in lime since husband Alan was photographed at a pro-Palestine rally several weeks ago bearing an offensive placard; it depicted Israel’s national flag with a swastika instead of a Star of David.
The greater point in Yazbek’s email was to insist that wholesale changes have been made at the Nomad enterprise, namely that Alan is “no longer involved in the management of the business”.
And that certainly suggests he’s relinquished all ties, but words can be tricky.
In fact, Alan remains a director and secretary of the Nomad group of companies, and a shareholder, of course, so not much has changed. Actually, nothing has changed; he bears just as much control over the company as he did a week ago.
Patrons will have to chew on that before deciding whether to grace the tables of Nomad Sydney or Reine & La Rue again.
YB
Kalium silence
When would-be potash company Kalium Lakes went bust 15 months ago, it burned up $84m in taxpayers’ cash courtesy of a loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility.
You’d think a disaster of that sort might rate a mention in NAIF’s annual report, delivered on Wednesday?
Instead it’s packed with laudatory cheerings of its $4.4bn investment in “transformational projects” for the north, or the $33.8bn in economic activity that project promoters expect to flow from the loans.
NAIF has been “investing for impact”, we’re told, including a highlighted $20m to the North Queensland Cowboys for a community and high-performance centre (it has 235 poker machines in its leagues club, but who are we to judge?)
Anyone hoping for reflections on mistakes is in for disappointment.
There’s not a mention of Kalium Lakes in the 101 pages of the report, and the project has even been quietly stripped from the map NAIF provides of its investment destination.
What are we to make of this?
Is NAIF’s annual report a reflection of the year that was or another glossy brochure to promote the government?
A spokesman told Margin Call that NAIF has called in an independent reviewer to look at its Kalium decisions, with a report due early next year. Until then, expect radio silence until Kalium’s receivers tally up the damage bill.
“Once the receivership process is concluded and final distributions are known, NAIF will provide a statement on the outcome.
“This will also be included in FY24/25 annual report,” he said.
NE
Foley living large
Spotted! Former NSW Labor opposition leader Luke Foley at trendy Bills in Sydney’s Darlinghurst conferencing with a chum over lunch.
Foley’s barely been mentioned in the press since he resigned in 2018 although he’s been busy running Derrycloony Advisory, a consulting firm without a website.
A one-off client was young rich-lister Jin Lin, a feng shui enthusiast and founder of property development company Aqualand.
Of note: Derrycloony is run from Foley’s home address but it’s registered to Kamper Chartered Accountants, run by the brother of NSW Labor Minister Steve Kamper.
Foley’s other sidecrust, Margin Call has learned, comes from his work on the local planning panels for the Burwood, Blacktown and Canterbury-Bankstown City Councils.
These are paid gigs, too, the dosh adding up to between $1000 and $2000 per meeting.
And these gatherings are conducted monthly, so the maths is there to be done.
YB
What’s in a name?
A tasty scoop in the Financial Review on Monday, the paper claiming the Victorian government had clinched secret deals with Origin Energy and Energy Australia to keep their coal-fired power stations operating for up to a decade.
Few bones to pick with that.
First, Origin Energy doesn’t have a coal-fired power station in Victoria, and second is that it cut no such deal with the Victorian government.
Somehow, the Fin confused Origin Energy with another power company, AGL, whose Loy Yang coal-fired power station is based in Victoria.
A bit of a whoopsie-daisy but, sure, mistakes happen. No apology from the paper or a correction in print, even though Origin’s name was emblazoned in the headline (although the version online was updated to smooth out the wrinkles). That was after Origin’s people complained about this unflattering accusation and were understandably rabid about it, pursuing it directly with the Fin’s leadership (another headache for editor-in-chief James Chessell).
The other reason to mention the flub is that it was published on the very same day as the Financial Review’s much-vaunted Energy and Climate Summit at the Hilton in Sydney. So, not only did the timing suck, but the paper found itself levelling a false claim at Origin just as its CEO Frank Calabria was taking the stage alongside senior resources writer Angela Macdonald-Smith.
And while Macdonald-Smith didn’t write the piece, or have anything to do with it, we heard she suffered some second-hand mortification over the debacle.
YB
Creagh payday
The mining game, as they say, is one of great risk and reward. And those rewards are about to pay out big time for Ora Banda mining boss Luke Creagh, sitting as he is on a rights package worth $68m.
Creagh’s decision to leave his C-suite job at gold major Northern Star Resources two years ago to join struggling Ora Banda was met with raised brows at the time. Now, with paydirt near, Creagh is the talk of the town. He signed on with Ora Banda for 50 million shares and a company-backed loan of $1.75m to buy another 50 million, if he wanted. The stock was worth about 3c at the time.
Today, Ora Banda is worth 89c and the first 25 million sign-on shares have already vested. The remaining 75 million – including the loan shares – vest in June.
Assuming Ora Banda’s share price holds, Creagh is looking at a $68m payday by June 30.
And even in the hyper-competitive mining circles of Western Australia these developments are attracting praise rather than scorn.
It’s a turnaround story, after all. Ora Banda was worth less than $100m when Creagh accepted the job. Now it’s in the neighbourhood of $1.7bn, the result of re-tooling WA’s Davyhurst gold mine, until recently a graveyard that sent five other gold operations broke.
Creagh took the operation underground, into profit, and is now sitting on one of the biggest CEO bonanza’s we’ve seen.
Bottoms up!
NE
The true cost of cut-price deal White knocked back
In one of the worst decisions ever made by a billionaire with more to lose than money, WiseTech boss Richard White could have settled his legal feud with Linda Rogan last year for just $400,000.
The Cat’s luxury lair raided by corporate cop
The Byron Bay home of media entrepreneur Antony Catalano was paid a visit by ASIC on the hunt for a computer, as part of an alleged investigation of trading in asset manager Magellan.