Mike Baird getting into swing of new cricket role; Jarden rounds out tough year

Mike Baird told staff at HammondCare that his appointment at Cricket Australia would ‘have no impact to my role here’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nikki Short

Here’s the quiet word from former NSW premier Mike Baird. The HammondCare chief executive announced on Monday he would split his time at the old persons home operator with a new position as Cricket Australia chairman.

In an internal missive on Tuesday, Baird told staff at HammondCare that his appointment would “have no impact to my role here”.

“I have been lucky enough to see first-hand (sic) the incredible journey the sport has been on in our communities across Australia and look forward to seeing the journey continue,” he wrote. “Having said that we surely have to bring back some hallway cricket??” he wrote, signing off “howzat”. Nauseating to say the least – and probably grounds for a SafeWork NSW investigation.

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Jarden rounds out tough year

Jarden’s Australian operations have had quite a year.

The investment bank’s chief executive, James Lee, was in ­November forced to assure Australian employees they were in safe hands after a restructure ­abruptly moved local boss Robbie Vanderzeil out of day-to-day operations.

Worse, the bank was also forced to commission an independent review of workplace concerns raised by one employee because the original complaint was so poorly handled that two staff members resigned from the company. One complainant, sources said at the time, found that they had been restructured out of their position and demoted.

In August, The Australian reported that a female research employee had resigned from the firm after separate claims of workplace misconduct by the same two senior equities and ­research staff.

At the time, the company said it could not comment on any ­investigation.

So that’s all going quite well, apparently. Now Jarden has decided on its summer intake of interns. As the bank wrote on LinkedIn, “the internship program involves hands-on learning alongside some of the most experienced bankers and research analysts in the country”. Citation needed.

As this masthead’s Joyce Moullakis revealed, the bank had managed to snag 32nd spot in announced mergers and acquisitions for the year last month, behind Barrenjoey and Jefferies. Last year, Jarden finished in 16th spot. In equity capital markets, Jarden is also well outside the top 10, sitting in 19th spot for 2022.

And of the 13 summer interns, Jarden management have managed to find an incredible two women. Good work. As the bank said last month: “Jarden is ­committed to the cultural standards it has set in the workplace and is committed to ensuring that all employees meet these standards.”

By comparison, UBS ­managed 16 summer interns and a total of seven women.

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ACCC transparency

Here’s to total transparency at the nation’s competition regulator. On Monday morning, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission was calling around interested parties on ANZ’s $4.9bn takeover of Suncorp’s bank to say that the application for the deal was expected to be received “imminently”. That afternoon, of course, it told the market via media release that the application had in actual fact been received 10 days earlier. Just a great way to engender trust in this Christmas season, one banker quipped.

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Sound advice

Chris Smith, formerly of Sky News Australia and 2GB Radio, was sacked from his broadcasting roles this week amid scandalous revelations of his inappropriate conduct at a Christmas partly last week.

Chris Smith.

As The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday, guests said Smith was strutting around The Establishment “like a dinosaur with a huge ego”. A real fossil. He allegedly grabbed one woman by the “bottom” and subjected another to lewd commentary about how she appeared in holiday photographs. Many of his former colleagues, including Rita Panahi, Andrew Bolt and Laura Jayes at Sky, and 2GB’s morning supremo Ray Hadley, had demanded he not return to respective positions.

But here’s something Margin Call has confirmed. Hadley warned those at 2GB not to bring Smith back to the airwaves some two years ago. Of course, plenty of evidence of his past drunken antics were available, of course, in – err – newspaper articles some time ago. And while many disagree with Hadley on a whole manner of things, perhaps this warning should have been heeded.

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Lobbyist upstaged

How’s this for bad timing. The lobbying and polling outfit formerly known as Crosby Textor held its Christmas knees-up at Opera Bar on Tuesday night.

Michael Photios’s PremierNational Christmas party was the big show in town. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Sadly for that mob, not too many in attendance, our correspondents report. In the room, apart from a small number of Peter Dutton staffers, were the Financial Services Council’s Blake Briggs, former Scott Morrison chief of staff John Kunkel, US Studies Centre staffer Mike Green and former Macquarie spinner Navleen Prasad. Of course the big show in town was Michael Photios’s PremierNational Christmas party, which saw a swag of Liberal Party figures including manager of opposition business Paul Fletcher, ex-Photios business partner Nick Campbell, currently Photios business partner Graham Richardson, and a swag of MPs.