Michael Malone’s ring-in Maryna Fewster stirs pot at Seven West

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Internet richie Michael Malone wasn’t told about Seven West boss Tim Worner’s illicit affair with group personal assistant Amber Harrison before he joined the Seven West board in 2015, but it looks like the iiNet founder is making his presence felt in the boardroom now.

It was Malone who recommended the services of former iiNet COO Maryna Fewster to his Seven West boardmates to help clean up their West Australian operations.

Malone’s former South African-born employee has been inside Seven HQ since late last year, having a thorough look around. She has left no stone unturned and, we understand, has bruised the heads of senior Sandgropers.

Seven says she’s in there as a “consultant”, helping with “the integration of News’s assets into our businesses and our evolution of our businesses over in the west”.

Mark Shelton.

But Margin Call can reveal that her forensic report on the state of affairs in the wild, wild Seven West was directly linked to the departure of CFO Mark Shelton before Christmas and the “long service leave” of now exited boss Chris Wharton.

Her diligent work has largely flown under the radar as the Worner sex-expenses-governance scandal has dominated headlines.

Yesterday, Fewster was still working out of Seven West’s Perth headquarters (dubbed “The Swamp”), on the same executive floor as interim boss and fellow South African Durbanite Philip Teale, a 35-year-old audit partner that Kerry Stokes brought in from Ernst & Young after Wharton’s December departure.

And it seems like Malone’s former tech exec Fewster is becoming part of the furniture.

Last week she was appointed as a director of the SWM-News Community Newspaper Group joint venture, which operates a Perth network of 17 local rags. She was too busy in meetings to take our calls yesterday.

Fewster’s husband Stephen Fewster is also a former Malone iiNet senior exec. These days he is effective chief tech officer at Andrew Forrest’s iron ore miner Fortescue.

Meanwhile Maryna and Wharton remain fellow directors of the West Coast Eagles, the Perth AFL footy team that previously counted Julie Bishop as a director until she became Foreign Minister.

The outlook for chairman Russell Gibbs’ Eagles boardroom? Turbulent. We understand Wharton holds Fewster directly responsible for his corporate demise. Go the Eagles!

Maryna Fewster.

Heady heights

Maryna Fewster’s fastidious approach to integrating things in the west must surely put her top of the list to permanently take over from auditor Philip Teale at the Perth-headquartered arm of the Seven West Media empire.

She sure ticks a lot of boxes.

The Seven West executive team currently numbers just one woman, regulatory affairs boss Bridget Fair.

Over on the SWM board, Michelle Deaker is the lone female on the nine-strong board. That’s after the exit of lawyer Sheila McGregor at the start of February over the ongoing Amber Harrison saga.

(Like Michael Malone and former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, McGregor wasn’t told of the Harrison-Worner sex-and-expenses situation when she joined the board in 2015.)

Fewster’s investigations since late last year also mean she already knows where any bodies are buried or cremated ashes scattered.

As the company cheerily announced last week, Oppeus International’s Nick Varigos is carrying out the executive search for Chris Wharton’s replacement, and is set to make recommendations within weeks.

Jayne Hrdlicka.

Fake pilot alert

If Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford had set a test for Jetstar CEO Jayne Hrdlicka when he recommended she be the keynote speaker at the seventh annual Melbourne Foundation for Business and Economics Annual Dinner last Thursday evening, then she passed with flying colours.

The foundation was, we gather, keen to break with tradition and have a female speaker at the event. Clifford, a progressive sort of fellow, put forward Hrdlicka’s name to the organisers, perhaps keen to try out his star executive in front of a crowd of more than 400 of Melbourne’s rich and famous, also with her visiting boss, Alan Joyce, who before his promotion to the Qantas top job ran Jetstar.

Hrdlicka impressed the mighty audience with a deeply personal speech, including a brilliant anecdote about her
five-year-old son Josh.

Back in 2012, when she moved to Melbourne to run Jetstar, Hrdlicka and her husband Jason sat Josh and his older brother down to explain their move and the fact she would be running the budget carrier.

“The oldest burst into tears. There were waterworks, and he predictably cried: ‘What about my soccer team and my friends?’,’’ Hrdlicka said, before adding: “But my youngest was shaking his head and looking seriously concerned. He said, ‘Mummy I am not worried about me, I am worried about you. I don’t know what you are going to do. You don’t know how to fly a plane! This is seriously not a good idea’,’’ the former Bain consultant said with a wide smile.

The well-received speech would not have harmed her credentials if she has ambitions to follow Joyce in the top job at Qantas at some point.

There was speculation Hrdlicka put her hand up for the Woolworths CEO role in 2015. She was previously on the Gordon Cairns-chaired board of the retailer but resigned in February last year.

Hrdlicka’s career flight path was the gossip among many in the crowd after she left the stage, although Joyce is going nowhere in a hurry.

The chatter was that the 100th anniversary of the airline in 2020 — by which stage the Irish expat will have been in the role for almost 12 years — might prove the moment for him to go out on a high. That’s assuming the airline continues on its turbulence-free trajectory.

Dastardly Dastyari

An update on Labor senator Sam Dastyari ’s campaign to get Ramsay Health Care boss Chris Rex to front up to a parliamentary committee before he leaves the Michael Siddle-chaired private hospital operator.

There’s still no word from the Ramsay bunker about Rex’s thinking. The CEO has been jetting around Europe following the group’s half-year results, so some delay is understandable.

But as Dastyari made clear in this week’s Daily Show-style video, the Senate (a bit like Don Corleone) has the power to make Rex an invitation he can’t refuse.

While Rex hasn’t leapt at the Canberra invitation, the bosses over in private healthcare insurance land seem keener to appear and give their account for why costs keep rising.

NIB chief executive Mark Fitzgibbon, who as it happens is the brother of Dasher’s shadow ministerial colleague Joel Fitzgibbon, will appear voluntarily before the senate committee tomorrow.

Wonder what the better paid Fitzgibbon will say about Rex’s mob?