Macquarie’s dummy spit over big bank levy

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Mothers comforted distressed children, tradies downed tools and flags flew at half mast following the news that Nicholas Moore’s investment bank Macquarie Group was mulling a move offshore.

What a tragedy.

According to an eye-raising report in the Australian Financial Review, “Macquarie Bank executives had relayed to at least one of the major political parties it was canvassing options for relocating overseas following the announcement of the bank tax in the May budget.”

It seems that that major political party was not the Liberal Party. We understand Treasurer Scott Morrison first learned about Moore’s threat in his morning clippings.

The team of banking royal commission champion Bill Shorten seem to have been better informed, as has been the way with so much of the big banks’ defence operations of late. Former ALP adviser Simon Banks — now the managing director of Labor-aligned lobbying shop Hawker Britton — counts Moore’s Millionaires Factory as a client.

Suggestions in the AFR linking the move to ScoMo’s bank levy were pointedly indulged by Macquarie’s spokeswoman.

That’s brazen. The new levy will cost Moore’s outfit about $69 million a year, before tax, according to research by Citi. That’s less than a quarter of what the big four will each pay.

Also, keep in mind Macquarie reported a $2.22 billion full-year profit in May.

And don’t forget Moore was last year paid $18.7m, plus he scooped up another $8.2m in dividends paid out on the almost $200m in Mac Bank shares he owns.

Some believe the threat by Moore — who, as he is chairman of the Sydney Opera House we had previously assumed he was a patriotic sort of fellow — was an attempt to get the Treasurer to tone down his banker-wanker rhetoric.

Other sources believe the offshore move has been plotted for some time. They say Macquarie is simply using the levy for cover to explore the option.

We called Moore to clear up the matter.

Unfortunately, as Moore explained to us, he was “in a meeting” when we called to ask about the rationale for the move.

“We’ve put out a statement,” he told us. “It will be pretty clear.”

It wasn’t. The statement — such as it was — didn’t include a single word on the threatened relocation.

So the mystery about the move continues, as does the nation’s distress. How can we, the investment bank-loving public, bear it?

Gender bender

Less than three months after we revealed the newest female recruit to chairman Peter Costello’s Nine Entertainment board, here’s another one.

Next week the Nine board will achieve gender parity with the announcement of new director Janette Kendall.

Although we shouldn’t let the Melbourne-based Kendall’s gender distract from her pedigree.

The marketing consultant was formerly the executive general manager of Crown Melbourne, owned by Nine’s former owner James Packer.

Kendall is also a non-executive director on chairman Neil Chatfield’s Costa board, alongside the fruit and veg business’s wealthy founder Frank Costa. She’s also a non-exec on the boards of the Melbourne Theatre Company and production agency Wellcom Worldwide.

Also on Costello’s board are Southern Phone director Catherine West (previously a legal director at Sky in Britain), former Deloitte partner Samantha Lewis, Brunswick Heads publican David Gyngell and Hugh Marks, the safe pair of hands who took over from Gyngell as CEO.

Compared to their industry peers, it’s happy days over on the Nine board. Aside from an unrepeatable incident over at A Current Affair, the business is humming along.

Streaming joint venture Stan seems to have impressed analysts, the market cap of
$1.14bn is comfortably No 1 in free TV land and not a single executive assistant has set the lawyers on Marks.

Speaking of which ...

Just say you’re sorry

Mediation between Seven West Media and Tim Worner’s former mistress Amber Harrison continues.

The ongoing mediation began on Thursday, the day after Seven CEO Worner made a brief return to public life in Canberra for Mitch Fifield’s media executive parade.

An ongoing mediation is a promising mediation. Could it soon be third time lucky for Team Seven?

We wouldn’t bet on it. For a third time Seven’s legal tsar Bruce McWilliam is overseeing negotiations. No one should be surprised if McWilliam is soon telling his proprietor Kerry Stokes that things have fallen apart once again.

Just as well the trusting Seven West board — which after the resignation in February of corporate governance expert Sheila McGregor has one woman, Michelle Deaker — has complete faith in McWilliam’s negotiating powers.

For most companies in similar circumstances, a failed mediation might be a surprise. After all, it’s been six months since Harrison’s nuclear attack and three years since the first McWilliam-led attempt at resolving this matter.

But if the talk coming out of the Federal Court is correct, it would seem Seven is keen on getting this thing to trial in the Supreme Court. That blockbuster is scheduled to begin on July 10.

Apparently the McWilliam team are insisting the former Seven executive assistant put her name to an apology as part of any settlement.

A grovelling apology from Harrison after three years of hardball Seven legal tactics seems only slightly more probable than Worner becoming an ambassador for Elizabeth Broderick’s Male Champions of Change.