Little to show but FFI laments the lack of financial support for its green hydrogen ambitions

Has CBA chief Matt Comyn sought another restructure of the bank’s corporate functions?

Mark Hutchinson, CEO of Fortescue Future Industries, gave interviews this week with a lukewarm assessment of FFI’s commitment to its domestic ­ambitions, owing largely to the dearth of free money being provided for its green hydrogen larks.

Not like in the US, of course. “That’s where a lot of the opportunity is,” Hutchinson said.

By “opportunity” he means the showering of coin being rained upon green hydrogen evangelists courtesy of the Biden’s administration and its strangely misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.

Lamenting the Australian position, Hutchison parroted the oft-repeated sentiments of his chairman, Andrew Forrest, and cautioned that if Australia doesn’t chuck a bit of baksheesh at its own green hydrogen industry, or find “incentives” for its development, as he termed it, then the “investment dollars will flow out of the country”.

Fortescue Future Industries chief executive Mark Hutchinson looks on as his boss, Andrew Forrest, speaks. Picture: AAP

Don’t say we weren’t warned! Meanwhile, Forrest and FFI still haven’t provided a skerrick of evidence proving that green hydrogen can be manufactured at scale, nor a set of numbers for the market.

Instead, we’ve heard Forrest complain to an audience in July last year that green hydrogen projects aren’t being funded because “we don’t know what it is” and “we haven’t produced a bucket full of it yet”. Presumably FFI’s investors at BlackRock just laughed that one off.

Leaning harder into the US, as Hutchinson suggests, is also hardly achievable while departures continue within FFI’s upper levels of management.

In February, this column reported the loss of Stan Knez, FFI’s chief technology officer – based in the US and gone after just 11 months – as well as that of Kim van Hattum, FFI’s manager of Australian east coast operations. Their names trail a slew of others who cashed out after a matter of months.

Margin Call hears that Maia Schweizer, FFI’s Western States director, is the latest to quit the company, having done so in March. She told Margin Call, via an FFI spokeswoman: “Yes, I have moved back to the East Coast and am looking forward to spending time with my partner.

“I’m excited about FFI’s projects in Australia and beyond and will be rooting from afar.”

More CBA cuts

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn turned to McKinsey in 2019 to carve out costs from the business and “agile” the organisation, to use the loathsome corporate buzzword so popular these days. The fallout from that continues, and we hear McKinsey’s back again providing further advice to CBA on a restructure of the bank’s corporate functions.

Might that have anything to do with a round of redundancies recently enforced at the EGM and GM levels?

Commonwealth Bank chief Matt Comyn. Picture: Luis Ascui

Not according to a bank spokesman, who told Margin Call: “Like all companies, we regularly review how we are organised and the skills that we need to best serve our customers. From time to time, this may mean some roles are impacted.”

So, yes to redundancies, no to any link with McKinsey. And yet the fat-cutting at CBA hasn’t gone deep enough, it seems, with senior managers still being instructed to find further positions for the trash heap – up to 10 per cent of the 50,000-strong organisation, apparently.

As previously reported, the relationship between CBA and McKinsey goes back decades. Comyn’s predecessor, Ian Narev, spent nine years at the firm, while group executive Angus Sullivan also held a role at McKinsey.

Atkins spreads the blame

A few developments in the legal suit involving Melbourne businessman David Koadlow and his attempt to recover $13m from the now-defunct Magnolia Capital and its founder, Mitchell Atkins.

As previously reported, Koadlow, of the Smorgon family, has been suing Atkins in the Federal Court to recover a rather appreciable sum of money, most of which is thought to be gone. Koadlow, perhaps regrettably, invested with Atkins after being convinced of Magnolia’s bona fides during a lunch meeting on Little Bourke St in 2021.

Not that he’s the only investor trying to recover his money. Margin Call has established that Atkins is being pursued by numerous clients, some of whom have successfully obtained freezing orders against him, such that he was forced to place his group of companies into liquidation in November.

The latest is that Atkins has also declared personal bankruptcy in recent weeks, according to a federal court judgment, which unflatteringly noted a “protracted and consistent pattern of noncompliance with court orders”.

Those orders stated that he needed to produce documents for Koadlow’s team so they could establish the whereabouts of the $13m, or whether it was mostly blown up on a series of margin calls, as some connected to the case have long suspected.

On Friday, Atkins responded to Margin Call’s inquiries by heaping great amounts of blame on the Koadlow family for the demise of Magnolia, accusing Koadlow and his wife of proposing to establish a joint account with him for which they “never followed through”. Somehow, this allegedly left him with a $20m debt to manage.

“As the Koadlows applied for and were granted freezing orders against me dealing with assets in July 2022, the Magnolia Group has been wound down, various entities have gone into liquidation and I am now personally bankrupt,” Atkins said.

That’s one side of the story, to be sure, and it’s difficult not to recall the remarks of Melbourne Federal Court judge Francois Kunc from June last year in a case between Atkins and another Magnolia investor.

Addressing Atkins’ legal counsel, Kunc said: “How am I to avoid the conclusion that your client has simply been at the centre of a scam, which, to be quite frank … that’s what it looks like,” noting Atkins’ “disgraceful commercial conduct”.

Margin Call understands the Australian Securities & Investments Commission is interested in Atkins and the circumstances of Magnolia Capital. Comment was sought from the regulator.