Macquarie banker Michael Burn’s Tatts bet looks good

Illustration: Rod Clement

Macquarie banker and horseflesh enthusiast Michael Burn has a good poker face.

Who knew, as the man who is also Vic­toria Racing Club chair did the rounds of the Tabcorp marquee at this year’s spring racing ­carnival, that he was cooking up a rival $8.4 billion deal to swipe Tatts from the clutches of his cordial host?

His just unveiled Pacific Consortium — also comprising Morgan Stanley Infrastructure, US private equity giant KKR and First State Super, each with 30 per cent to Macquarie’s 10 per cent — doesn’t want the Tatts wagering and gaming businesses, which it will spin off via a float or trade sale, possibly even to rival Tatts bidder Tabcorp.

Michael Burn, left, and David Attenborough at the Spring Racing Carnival.

The Macquarie consortium just wants the annuity-style lotteries business.

We’re just not sure what that says about VRC chair Burn’s faith in the future of the punt?

If Tabcorp boss David Attenborough doesn’t want Burn’s wagering and gaming cast-offs (and yesterday he was still spruiking his own $11.3bn bid), Burn’s Macquarie team already has the number of another potential buyer — billionaire Seven boss Kerry Stokes.

Burn and Stokes negotiated last year over the sale of Victorian racing rights to Stokes’s Racing.com, cutting incumbent Tabcorp out of the picture. At that table Burn was wearing his VRC (top) hat.

The spun-off Tatts wagering operations would feed spectacularly into Stokes’s ambitions, with the Perth media mogul already sniffing around the soon-to-be-privatised $1bn WA TAB business to complement his east coast racing broadcast rights.

Burn’s on fire

Just how many hats can Melbourne-based Michael Burn juggle?

He’s also an equity holder in the online sports betting platform Moneyball, the brainchild of former Fairfax digital executives James Fitzgeral d and Rax Huq.

With the help of minds like Burn’s, they want to build a ­global business tapping into fantasy betting and sports betting that sits outside the tent occupied by traditional players such as Tatts and Tabcorp.

Macquarie’s bankers liked the plan so much that more than a few have tipped their own cash into the fledgling enterprise, including managing director Peter Curry (who is also a Moneyball director) and the founder of the bank’s equity capital markets business, Bill Best.

It’s a business that could trouble online wagering outfit CrownBet, 67 per cent-controlled by James Packer’s Crown Resorts.

All of which completes the circle of advisers around the industry, with UBS’s Kelvin Barry looking after the Tabcorp bid for Tatts (Tatts is using Goldman’s Joe Fayyad), as well as advising Packer on Crown’s corporate restructure.

UBS's Kelvin Barry.

Barry can still get a fee from Tabcorp boss David Attenborough even if Burn wins the day. All Barry has to do is convince Tabcorp to buy the wagering business. Or what if he bought it for Packer? Seems like a win-win.

Bishop stars at Crown

It didn’t quite rival a Chinese jail, but security was super tight for the gala opening of Crown’s new $645m Perth hotel last night, with cars and guests being stopped a good couple of torpedo punts from the entrance to the event and wrist-banded before they could sip their first glass of Veuve Clicquot, writes Damon Kitney.

As the sun set on the city’s new AFL stadium, rapidly taking shape in the distance, Crown’s China arrests didn’t stop Perth’s A-listers turning up to show their support for the company, most notably the woman on whose shoulders largely rests Crown’s hopes of getting their staff released, James Packer’s good friend, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

As she waited for the speeches and an elaborate welcome to country ceremony to kick off, she chatted with Carsales chair Jeffrey Browne and his fiancee Rhonda Wyllie as celebrity chef Neil Perry and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann looked on.

When the formalities commenced Bishop stood alongside partner David Panton as speeches by cricketer Adam Gilchrist, Crown chair Rob Rankin, Resorts boss Barry Felstead and WA Premier Colin Barnett made no mention of the elephant in the room.

Gilchrist had enough problems just remembering that Rowen Craigie is actually CEO of Crown Resorts. First he introduced Rankin with the title, then Felstead before he got third time lucky.

When he spoke, Rankin reminded the crowd that also included former Seven Group boss Peter Gammell and investment bankers John Poynton, Mark Barnaba and John Adgemis (who was arm in arm with his model and singer partner Cheyenne Tozzi) that he and Gilchrist both did their primary schooling in Deniliquin in the Southern Riverina of NSW.

Guests gather for the opening.

He also sent good wishes across the seas from Crown’s (these days Buenos Aires-based) owner James Packer, who he had spoken to only hours earlier. The billionaire apparently couldn’t contain his “excitement’’ about the opening, but it was clearly a step too far given what is currently going on in his post-Maria Carey world to jump on his jet and show up.

There were no such issues for Crown directors John Alexander, Geoff Dixon, Harold Mitchell and Helen Coonan, who after an earlier board meeting also put in an appearance before jumping on a mid-evening private jet back to the east.

Staying on was Rankin, who — with glass of Leeuwin Estate red in hand — had a lively conversation with the man who helped build the place, Multiplex heir Tim Roberts. When Rankin split the scene mid-evening to head back east for a few days in Melbourne, where he is now spending more time than usual away from his Hong Kong home, it was left to Crown execs Todd Nisbet and Peter Crinis to prop up the bar until closing time in the cavernous new Crystal Club-turned nightclub for the evening on the 15th floor.

Bellamy’s on ropes

Launceston-headquartered baby formula producer Bellamy’s Australia’s trading halt was yesterday upgraded to a “suspension from official quotation”.

Now the question circling investors is: will Laura McBain still be the beleaguered company’s CEO when Bellamy’s trades again on Dominic Stevens’ ASX?

Some longstanding backers of the former market darling are keen for McBain, an accountant by training and self-taught Sinologist, to remain in the job.

Bellamy's Organic chief executive Laura McBain.

But we hear there’s a view among some members of chair Rob Woolley’s board that a cock-up of the size of the company’s recent misreading of the Chinese regulatory environment — which, once finally revealed a fortnight ago, was followed by a halving of the share price — demands a head. And a senior one.

It’s not clear that unhappy board members will be sated by that of chief marketing officer Chris Sherbo n, who all of a sudden is leaving Bellamy’s to “pursue other opportunities”.

Still, any scheme by Bellamy’s directors to end McBain’s time in the top job won’t be without its complications. McBain’s great champion Woolley also chairs another Tasmanian food business, TasFoods.

After all, who should be on the TasFoods board, alongside Woolley? None other than McBain’s husband, former Deloitte partner Roger McBai n. That’s a close relation — even by Tasmanian standards. And it could just save her.

Flynn’s hot deal

Flanked by his advisers from Cadence Advisory and lawyers from Gilbert & Tobin, APN Outdoor chairman Doug Flynn was a happy luncher in the Rockpool Bar & Grill crowd in Sydney yesterday.

Of course Flynn was. He’d just announced the $1.6bn merger of his outdoor advertising business with rival oOh! Media.

Now they just need Australian Competition & Consumer Commission boss Rods Sims to give the deal the OK. It’ll be a few lunches yet until they find out.

Moves in PM’s office

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has this week dismissed talk of one of the staples of the Australian summer: a cabinet reshuffle.

While the ministry is apparently on hold, movements in his Prime Ministerial Office continue.

There has in recent months been a trio of departures as John Garnaut, Tony Parkinson and Brad Burke have set off, after about a year’s service, to life outside the Turnbull PMO.

The latest change in the government’s Canberra HQ isn’t a loss but rather an elevation. Mark Brudenell is no longer a “senior adviser”.

He’s now a “principal adviser”, a title Parkinson and Burke had before their respective departures.

There’s also a shuffle. Turnbull loyalist Kathryn McFarlane will move in the new year from the PMO in Canberra — where she has been a senior member of the media team — to Turnbull’s electoral office. No intrigue behind McFarlane’s redeployment. She’s pregnant.

Turnbull backs funds

There were a few hearts in mouths yesterday as Malcolm Turnbull walked into the ballroom at the Westin for breakfast with the Financial Services Council. Last time he ventured into a Westpac-sponsored event it was the bank’s 199th anniversary bash in April and didn’t that go well.

PM Malcolm Turnbull in his office at Parliament House. Picture: Courier Mail.

That event was held a day after Westpac was hit with charges of rate-rigging and featured some of the sharpest comments from a PM about banks since Paul Keating was in the Lodge.

But fears were allayed as Turnbull took to the stage declaring financial services “a great and innovative industry’’ that “is trusted by millions of Australians’’.

Turnbull also managed a shout out to Australian Securities & Investments Commission boss and fellow Point Piper resident — and devotee of Shuquan Liu’s Chinese wonder tea — Greg Medcraft, who was beaming as the PM noted how the government had handed him $130m in extra funds, part of which is being used to investigate and prosecute the banks.

ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft (left).

Medcraft is on the hunt for a new job as his 18-month contract extension runs out next year.

It’s unlikely he’ll be following the path of his predecessor at ASIC, Tony D’Aloisio. The former lawyer and ASX boss left the corporate cop to tend the vines at his highly rated Victorian winery Oakridge, but is returning to the corporate scene next year as chairman of Perpetual (whose chief executive Geoff Lloyd chairs the FSC).