Malcolm, Lucy Turnbull to become grandparents again

Cartoon: Peter Nicholson.

In an already welcome distraction from the quasi-federal election campaign … congratulations are in order, Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull are to become grandparents again.

Daughter Daisy Turnbull Brown is expecting her second child with academic husband James Brown.

Daisy, a teacher at a private girls college in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, is believed due in September, hopefully (for Grandpa) well into Turnbull’s first term as elected PM.

The Turnbulls’ first grandchild Jack Turnbull Brown stole the show at PM T’s swearing in as the 29th PM of Oz after toppling Tony Abbott last September, with the then almost two-year-old laughing and singing to himself throughout.

Father James is a former Army officer and now helms think tank Alliance 21 at the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre.

Broadspectrum buyback

Broadspectrum chairman Diane Smith-Gander and her major shareholder, Allan Gray’s Simon Mawhinney, may yet rue the day they rejected Spanish suitor Ferrovial — twice.

With PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill yesterday announcing the closure of the Manus Island immigration detention centre, one of Broadspectrum’s most lucrative contracts, there’s little chance debonair Ferrovial exec Santiago Olivares will come back for a third bite of the fast-souring cherry.

Yesterday Smith-Gander threw the kitchen sink at the market in a bid to put a floor under Broadspectrum shares, reaffirming guidance and touting a share buyback that will kick off as soon as Ferrovial’s bid formally collapses.

But it came to little, with the stock collapsing 5.8 per cent.

This was on top of a 10 per cent tumble the day prior as the market realised Ferrovial was would fail to get the 50 per cent acceptances required ahead with its bid by deadline on Monday.

To investors seeing yesterday’s closing price of $1.05, Ferrovial’s $1.35 bid now looks good, but it’s too late for the Spaniards to waive the condition (even if they wanted to).

Ferrovial’s previous bid a year ago of $2 is now but a memory.

Broadspectrum shares were down yesterday even before O’Neill’s announcement came through at about 4pm, because on Tuesday the PNG Supreme Court had decided the Manus centre was illegal. The company is yet to respond to that ruling, let alone O’Neill’s pronouncement.

Home truths

Freshly septuagenarian billionaire Bob Ell might have spent $30 million on his non-harbourfront Sydney home, Addenbrooke, on Bellevue Hill’s Cranbrook Road, but the veteran property developer and his 40-something wife Bridget aren’t happy with their digs.

The couple are wrangling with Deb Thomas’s Woollahra council over plans to overhaul their 2000sq m-plus home, putting in an indoor pool, new terracing and more windows to let in more of their non-harbour view.

Meantime, across the Nullarbor, agribusiness millionaire Mauro Balzarini and his wife Giovanna Boventi are trying once again to flog their $20m European-style villa on the Swan River in Perth’s flash Dalkeith.

Balzarini is boss and major shareholder of freshly listed Wellard Group, Australia’s biggest livestock exporter, which floated last year in a deal that unlocked the couple’s wealth and could catapult them into this year’s rich list.

Since the couple bought the property in 2006 for $12.25m, they have used it mostly during school holidays. It is not the first time they have tried to flog the asset and this time they are using Rose Porteous’s hubby William Porteous for the sales job.

Roxy trading up

Win or lose, life goes on for Roxy Jacenko.

Hubby Oliver Curtis is due in the dock of the NSW Supreme Court on May 11 for a four-week insider trading trial.

Just two days after the trial is set to finish, Jacenko has booked herself — and her sponsors — into the Shangri-La Hotel at the Rocks for a two-hour seminar on making bucks from social media.

At up to $345 a ticket, it sounds like a nice little earner for the perennially perky PR pro.

But the household might need the dollars — and the income from daughter Pixie’s bow biz — if things don’t go Curtis’s way and he ends up in the Silverwater slammer awaiting sentencing.

No Louis Vuitton bomber jacket required there.

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