Mercurial Mark McInnes on move again

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Retail guru Mark McInnes has surprised with a change of heart on where he will rest his head while running billionaire Solly Lew’s retail empire.

Last year Premier executive McInnes forked out $9.25 million for Toorak mansion “Sark” on Hopetoun Road, one of ­Melbourne’s most prestigious addresses.

He bought the home in May with his partner, Lisa Kelly. The couple had grand plans to push over the pile and build a shiny new abode fit for McInnes and his young family.

His billionaire boss Lew backed the project, giving his CEO his blessing to sell $12m worth of Premier shares, as well as a $1m pay rise and — despite the protests of some investors — three years of rent assistance while the grand design was erected.

Mark McInnes and Solomon Lew

So after all the fuss, it’s a surprise to find McInnes has snuck the home back on to the market. He’s claiming the 27-month project timeframe was just too long for his family to bear — even with the shareholder-funded rental cushion.

Curiously, the impulsive former David Jones boss didn’t even lodge planning or building applications for the site with local authorities.

The whole saga has probably cost the retailer north of $10m (when you add $500,000-plus in stamp duty), with the home mortgaged to ANZ. Meanwhile the family continues to rent a home in nearby similarly leafy Malvern.

He and Kelly will have their fingers crossed it all turns out all right.

Last year former ANZ boss Mike Smith couldn’t sell his Toorak home up the road for its $15m asking price and it was taken off the market. Perhaps one to inspect.

There’s only one Cory

Newly independent senatorial rat Cory Bernardi is entering something of a crowded market on the far right with his new Australian Conservatives.

Having been nutting out plans for his Australian Conservatives spin-off for some time, he’s already got a new Australian Business Number up and running to take donations and membership payments from supporters.

But political punters might want to take care that their funds flow in the right direction.

Already in the space is the Australian Conservative Party corporate vehicle, now run by federal director Greg Bondar, a former head of the Christian Democratic Party.

Bondar had discussions with Bernardi about joining forces, but that has come to naught. Bondar is now operating under the United Conservatives Party banner due to some confusion over who actually controls the “Australian Conservative Party” name.

That had previously been the domain of rival conservative candidate Peter Wallace, who was ousted from the ACP board mid-last year. He’s gone on to form plans for his own new political movement, “Intervene”. All clear?

Cory Bernardi

Meanwhile, Bernardi applied for the trademark over the Australian Conservatives name in February last year, but that is yet to be granted. The SA pollie has pressed on regardless, yesterday relaunching his website calling for moneys and members.

Let’s hope he doesn’t hit an early copyright snag.

New Day dawning

The enterprising Bernardigot his wife Sinead Bernardi’s corporate vehicle CPAC Holdings to apply for his trademark.

The mother of their two sons is sole director of the company, while she is a 50-50 owner with her husband.

They have other entities in their corporate structure too, including Twenty-Eight KW, which owns the building out of which Bernardi has been running his Australian Conservative Foundation.

But that’s a recent thing. The Bernardis used to run Twenty-Eight KW out of a building owned by former SA senator Bob Day. The building was also used as Day’s electoral office.

Bernardi has previously said that the fellow conservatives would often meet to discuss issues.

So is Day part of Bernardi’s new venture? We asked yesterday, but didn’t hear back.

Billionaire’s beef

Meanwhile, Bernardi’s billionaire bestie Gina Rinehart scotched reports that she had funded his new party.

“Speculation that I have funded his new political venture is not correct,” Rinehart said in a statement.

Bernardi will hope to change that, whatever the protests of rival Rinehart favourite Barnaby Joyce.

Rinehart’s not really one to keep her allegiances — political or familial — secret, as was displayed yesterday with the branding of her Asia-bound full-blood Wagyu beef.

In a nod to history, Rinehart has taken inspiration from the “H3B” brand her great grandfather used a century ago out of his Ashburton station. That was an abbreviation for “Hancock 3 brothers”, after his son’s brothers George, John and Richard.

Fast forward a hundred years and Rinehart has gone with “2GR”, after Gina herself and her favoured daughter Ginia.

No guernsey for Rinehart’s other children Hope, John or Bianca, who have been embroiled in a bitter fight with their mother over the Hancock fortune.

Loose ends

Clive Palmer — the businessman who briefly achieved the political influence Cory Bernardi is now desperately pursuing — has made a few changes at his company Mineralogy.

His Bulgarian-born wife Anna Palmer stood down as a Mineralogy director on January 29, according to documents just lodged with ASIC.

The change was made days before the Federal Court ordered Palmer to allow liquidators access to the books of his businesses, including Mineralogy, as they probe the collapse of Queensland Nickel.

Both wife Anna and Palmer’s vagabond nephew Clive Mensink have been summoned to appear at hearings with liquidator FTI Consulting, which begin tomorrow.

Palmer, the former member for Fairfax, also remains embroiled in a series of ugly ongoing legal fights with Chinese giant CITIC Pacific over millions of dollars of disputed royalties from CITIC’s Sino Iron project in Western Australia.

Seven West goes south

More than $200m has been shaved off Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media over the last three consecutive trading days, as the sex-governance-and-expenses scandal continues to rattle investors.

Seven stock lost another 1.9 per cent yesterday to close at 76.5c, as Amber Harrison — the former Seven executive assistant who had an affair with now Seven CEO Tim Worner and has been engaged in a more than two-year bitter legal dispute with the company — released further embarrassing documents through her Twitter account.

Yesterday’s batch included a note written by Worner, then the CEO of Seven television, thanking Harrison for the “weird feeling” he experienced during a trip to Crown hotel in Melbourne during Seven’s flagship Australian Open in 2013. The thank you note was written on company stationery, with Worner’s management title stamped on the top and, we gather, was delivered through the Seven courier service. All very professional.

Tim Worner’s letter to Amber Harrison

Yesterday’s fall followed a 3.1 per cent drop on Monday on news that Harrison had lodged a formal complaint with Greg Medcraft’s corporate regulator ASIC and Dominic Steven s’ Australian Securities Exchange, claiming Seven had released a “factually incorrect statement to market … and have been trading on this incorrect information”.

And that followed a 2.4 per cent slip on Friday after Gilbert + Tobin corporate law­ expert Sheila McGregor resigned from the now almost all-male board in an apparent protest over the handling the affair.

It’s quite the build-up ahead of the group’s interim results, which Worner will deliver next week. Wonder what Seven’s market cap will be by then?