A nasty boardroom battle has been unfolding over recent days at the Melbourne Racing Club, which controls Caulfield, Mornington and Sandown courses.
With the club’s Caulfield Cup Carnival set to begin on October 14, incumbent chairman Matt Cain is poised to be renamed in the prestigious role, despite the best efforts of rivals to displace him.
This all comes amid an ongoing battle over the future of Sandown’s Ladbroke Park in Melbourne’s south east.
The club held its annual meeting at Caulfield racecourse last Thursday, where six candidates were running to secure three available board seats.
Incumbent MRC directors Scott Davidson, Justin O’Kane and Brooke Dawson each nominated to be returned to the board, while three new faces Caitrin Kelly, Tim Johnson and Chris Fox stood as fresh candidates.
The board, you see, is pretty much split down the middle on how to secure the financial future of the club.
Cain, as chair, is proceeding with a master plan that includes having Sandown rezoned so that the course can be redeveloped.
Vice chairman Nick Hassett, in contrast, wants to save Sandown and backed the election of the three new candidates who also see the future his way.
Alas, only one of those three was successful, that being Kelly, with incumbents Davidson and Dawson retaining their seats.
The result has kept the power base and chairmanship with Cain, who is now offshore and was unavailable to comment.
A bruised Hassett, we hear, is expected to also remain as deputy, but with he and Cain seeing the world differently there is likely to be no end to boardroom hostilities.
We also hear Victorian Racing Minister Anthony Carbines and the folk at Racing Victoria are pretty happy with the outcome, taking the view that the adults in the room have prevailed.
An official announcement on the chairmanship could come as early as Wednesday.
Board meetings should be fun from here.
Under the radar
Domination of the headlines for all the wrong reasons by Qantas, its old boss Alan Joyce, chair Richard Goyder and new chief Vanessa Hudson has allowed challenger brand Virgin Australia to fly under the radar.
The Bain Capital-owned airline is overdue to release its full-year results for 2022-23 to the corporate regulator.
Following on from achieving profitability in the first half, the numbers are expected to be healthy, but for now boss Jayne Hrdlicka is keeping her financial scorecard under wraps.
Hrdlicka and Bain are hoping to appeal to retail and institutional investors to relist the airline on the ASX in the near term. Strong numbers — Virgin is now in the black for the first time in a decade — would be an important filip to their efforts.
By mid-September last year Hrdlicka, who was back in Melbourne from the airline’s Brisbane base on the weekend to attend the AFL Grand Final, had already unveiled Virgin’s full-year results.
But recent weeks have been filled with news of controversies surrounding Virgin’s competitor Qantas, which Virgin would have no desire to deoxygenate via the release of their own good news. All Hrdlicka and her team have to do is stay schtum and they look good.
Regardless, with balance date long gone and accounts signed off, the airline is still getting on with rewarding execs.
Virgin has just told the regulator that it plans to carry out a share buyback in coming weeks — it did the same just after the end of the first half — although exact details are not yet available.
Last time around Virgin bought back almost 400,000 “Z” class shares, all of which are held for staff via Perpetual Corporate Trust. There are 1.03m such shares on issue.
A spokeswoman for the airline declined to comment on when Hrdlicka would release results or its capital management.
Long lunch
While Phil Lowe’s former central bank board colleagues pondered the cash rate, the former governor’s biggest decision yesterday was what to order for lunch as he dined at a Brisbane restaurant.
How quickly life can change with Lowe a world away from the Reserve Bank’s Martin Place headquarters and instead enjoying a relaxed Summer-style meal with his wife Australian Prudential Regulation Authority principal analyst Jocelyn Parker and family.
Monetary policy seemed far from Lowe’s mind at “laid-back convivial taverna” Greca at Howard Smith Wharves, where he was spied by real estate industry types who could talk of nothing else but interest rates and their impact on property prices.
It was something of an early celebration for Lowe, the ex-governor turns 62 on Wednesday.
Scyne success
While imported PwC Australia boss Kevin Burrowes can’t seem to stem the flow of negative headlines, the private equiteers at Allegro will be quietly pleased with how things are panning at the disgraced financial services firm’s spun-out government business, the rebadged Scyne Advisory.
The federal government’s Clean Energy Regulator has included Scyne as a late addition to its hand-picked panel of just seven advisers that it will use over the next five years.
While contemporaries were named to the panel at the start of August, Scyne only got a guernsey a couple of weeks ago.
The panel also the likes of KPMG and Accenture. They will assist the regulator with advisory services concerning the transition to clean energy, including the assessment of proposed projects.
In contrast, PwC proper has secured no new federal government work since May.
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