Seven West Media’s Tim Worner fronts up

Illustration: Rod Clement

There is nothing interim about John Alexander’s reign as executive chairman of James Packer’s $9 billion Crown Resorts. The proof is in the prestige property.

Margin Call can reveal the media-man-turned-gaming-exec is preparing to sell his $10 million-plus dress circle harbourfront apartment in Sydney’s Elizabeth Bay.

JA’s moving to Melbourne, where he will continue to run Crown from the gaming group’s Southbank facility.

Alexander, 66, took over as Crown boss this time last year after investment banker Rob Rankin suddenly exited both the listed gambling group and ­Packer’s private Consolidated Press.

Since then Alexander, a former chair and CEO of Packer’s now divested PBL Media group, has taken an axe to Crown’s cost base and divested a range of the billionaire’s and the listed Crown’s assets.

Tycoon James Packer and Crown Resorts executive chairman John Alexander

The southern relocation is a significant move for Alexander, a former editor-in-chief of Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review.

Alexander has held the Libby Bay luxury home in the historic Del Rio Apartments building since the early 1990s.

He shares the luxurious pad with his Italian photographer wife Alice Pagliano.

The move to Melbourne is a reminder the gaming giant’s Crown Sydney, a six-star luxury resort hotel and casino at Barangaroo, is still some years away.

The gaming, shopping and eating facility is set to open in 2021, at which time Packer will return to Oz from his current official base in Aspen, Colorado, to move into his Crown Barangaroo luxe apartment. At least that’s the current plan.

Gretel sets up shop

Things are on the move too for James Packer’s billionaire big sister Gretel Packer, who continues to take charge of her financial destiny after the siblings’ settlement of their late father Kerry Packer’s multi-billion-dollar estate.

Margin Call understands Gretel, 51, has just established her very own corporate office from which her staff will run the heiress’s increasingly complex financial and charitable affairs.

Packer has opted for familiar territory, subleasing space in Hudson House, on Macquarie Street, owned by her close adviser and fellow multi-millionaire Will Vicars.

Vicars runs his Caledonia Investments from level 10 of the historic building, which overlooks Sydney’s Domain. Packer’s staff are now working alongside the Caledonia team.

Vicars was Packer’s adviser in the financial separation from her brother, from which she emerged with a personal wealth believed to be north of $1.25bn.

Gretel Packer has established her own corporate office

Her brother, now back in Argentina at his Ellerstina polo estate, runs his private empire from space in ANZ Tower on Liberty Place on Castlereagh Street. That’s a seismic shift (although not a great distance) from the Packer’s former Park Street HQ.

Gretel knows Hudson House well. Last year she paid $8.37m for level 13 in the building, in which Vicars also owns two levels.

The Fairfax family’s Cambooya vehicle is also an owner in the building.

For now Packer’s staff are few but accomplished. Former Baker and McKenzie corporate lawyer Glen Selikowitz has joined and has already taken over as a director of several of the billionaire’s private corporate vehicles.

Also on staff is former Consolidated Press and Packer Family Foundation manager Freda Driscoll, who acts as company secretary on several of her companies.

Domain disquiet

All is not well among the executive team at Nick Falloon’s Fairfax-backed property outfit Domain.

Margin Call understands that Domain’s executive team — the “bench strength” executive chairman Falloon has discovered in recent weeks — has been riven by Antony “The Cat” Catalano’s sudden exit in mid-January.

The subsequent move by Falloon, who is also chairman of Fairfax, to set up a review of Domain’s workplace culture has exacerbated the rift.

We understand one of the executive team’s best paid members has become the focus of disquiet.

That individual has, rightly or wrongly, been fingered as the chief source for a series of stories in Fairfax’s Australian Financial Review that reported allegations, by unnamed parties, that Domain operated as a “boys club”.

Interestingly, Falloon — who after Monday’s results refused to speak to Margin Call, fellow journalists at The Australian and even Michelle Guthrie’s ABC — found time to be delicately interviewed by the lead author of those Fin Review sex-and-drugs-and-Fairfax stories.

That curious decision has furthered suspicions Falloon’s camp gave the green light to the racy, in-house reports.

Here’s hoping Greg Hywood behaves in a manner more fitting of a media company boss after he reveals Fairfax’s results this morning.

Worner fronts up

No Falloon-style shiftiness from Seven West Media CEO Tim Worner.

Despite a traumatic last 12 months, Kerry Stokes’ “Mr TV” fronted up and answered questions yesterday after releasing the media group’s results.

Margin Call asked Worner if he’d had conversations with Stokes about extending his Seven West CEO contract, which the group’s annual report suggests expires at the end of June.

“Believe you me, I speak to Kerry Stokes all the time,” Worner answered.

While he didn’t directly answer our extension question, we understand Worner’s sign-off on the analyst and media call (“See you in six months!”) was well informed.

With Seven proprietor Stokes right behind him, Worner isn’t going anywhere.

“I’m fired up,” Worner added, pointing out his energetic plan for the year ahead.

Seven West Media CEO Tim Worner

Margin Call doesn’t doubt it. In the afternoon, we spotted Worner walking briskly between Sydney’s investor-infested CBD towers.

By the early evening — by which time Seven’s stock had closed the day up a remarkable 18.7 per cent — Worner was spied on a plane bound to Melbourne to sell the Seven West story in the south.

And, befitting a CEO charged with a two-year, $125m cost-cutting drive, Worner was seated in economy.