Mike Sneesby carrying a torch for trouble

Nine boss Mike Sneesby agreed to be a torchbearer for the Paris Olympic Games.

Nine Entertainment CEO Mike Sneesby enraged his workforce by skipping off to Greece on a family holiday a fortnight ago, the very day staff learned 200 jobs would be slashed.

Sneesby is rumoured to have wanted that very bitter news to be flicked out to staff once he’d departed Australia, and presumably once he’d settled into a comfortable seat at a Kolonaki cafe. Thankfully, smarter heads managed to scupper that stupidity.

Are his batteries running low at the moment? Sneesby’s not proving to be a sensible decision-maker in these personally difficult times. We’ll come to why in a second.

This guy narrowly survives the Darren Wick affair, and the wellspring of sexual harassment claims released by that, only to then face a no-confidence motion from employees barely weeks afterwards.

He then shrugs, waves ta-ta and heads for the CGI sunsets of the Mediterranean summer. And now what do we hear he’s up to? He’s giving himself a victory lap.

The most tone-deaf CEO in the country has eagerly agreed to be a torchbearer for the Paris Olympic Games, so expect to see him being clapped along like some sort of national hero instead of an outright impostor. He’ll then hand off the Olympic lantern to an actual hero, like a wizened Resistance fighter, or a fencing champion, or K-pop star Jin.

If only the good people of ­ ­ ­Val-de-Marne or Essonne understood just how optically absurd this will look to anyone who works with Sneesby in Australia.

Consider: if Peter Costello hadn’t tried to bump off our colleague Liam Mendes at Canberra Airport, and if Catherine West hadn’t been appointed chair of Nine as a consequence, there’s every likelihood that Sneesby would have been banished by now from Nine’s HQ on Denison Street.

Isn’t Sneesby savvy enough to realise that running with a flame might not be construed as a symbol of Olympic pride but rather a literal manifestation of the millions of dollars his network has torched to secure the unprofitable games coverage?

We’re hearing he’ll accept this great honour in the days leading up to the opening ceremony, which should put him somewhere among the aforementioned burghs just outside of Paris.

Andrew Liveris is participating too, but that at least makes a skerrick of sense. The former Dow Chemical chairman is president of the organising committee for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics – plus he’s far less despised at the moment. For what it’s worth, Nine’s explanation is that former managing director Jeff Browne did the same thing back in London in 2012.

Senate session

Speaking of leaders under pressure, we’re hearing the Australian Catholic University’s governing council – known as Senate – has called an extraordinary meeting of its membership for Monday at 4pm.

Presumably it’s been triggered by a series of reports we’ve filed on the university’s leadership and revelations that its Dean of Law, Professor Kate Galloway, was terminated because of her views on abortion. That was within days of her signing the contract in January, too. Galloway was paid a handsome sum for the inconvenience: more than $1m in compensation and damages, plus a fresh job title with a new salary.

How much of that was made known to Senate members, and what they were told by vice-chancellor Zlatko Skrbis, is what is probably up for discussion come Monday. We asked ACU chancellor and Senate chair Martin Daubney KC about the meeting but he declined to ­comment.

Meanwhile, our ganderings at the university’s annual report this week turned up some punk figures around domestic travel expenditure, which doubled from 2020 to 2023, rising from $2.1m under the previous VC to 4.1m under Skrbis.

The Covid-19 pandemic would have been partly responsible for that.

We did ask whether Skrbis had relocated to Brisbane, as had been suggested, and were informed by ACU this wasn’t correct.

“ACU has a campus in Brisbane and Professor Skrbis visits that campus as part of his duties as vice-chancellor. This year he has spent a total of 26 days in Brisbane, including public holidays, annual leave and weekends,” the official said.

That settles the matter, but not the substantial increase in the travel spending.

Collard eviction

The downward slide of corporate grifter David Collard continues unabated, with the Scale Facilitation founder on the verge of being evicted from yet another New York apartment block.

For a refresh on Collard, this is the CEO who promised to deliver an electric battery gigafactory for Geelong, Victoria, only to have his headquarters raided simultaneously by the Australian Federal Police and agents from the tax office. No charges laid yet but keep an eye out – it’s shaping up to be one of the biggest frauds in the nation’s history.

David Collard at Manhattan Supreme Court earlier this year: Picture: Jefferson Siegel

But! That all happened well after Collard suckered Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles into talking up his talent and enterprise (Marles publicly called Collard a “force of nature” at an event in NYC), and after Collard convinced Industry Minister Ed Husic to take a tour of the proposed gigafactory site – if only for the photo op and legitimacy.

The saddest part of this sham is that staff went unpaid and some were even left penniless by Collard’s unscrupulous management. The liquidators have already said the financial account appeared to be made up. Employees are still owed more than $4m.

Collard had previously been accused of squatting in one Park Avenue apartment owned by Chinese billionaire Yiqian Liu, the art collector taking Collard to court over unpaid rent of $600,000.

Same story now, but this time it’s a different neighbourhood. The landlord of a Hell’s Kitchen apartment has gone to a NY court claiming Collard and others haven’t been paying rent since August 2023, owing more than $US140,000 ($207,000). And you bet he wants them out.

Aside from Collard, the petition cites two guys named Jerry Batista and Richard Zapatier as respondents to the matter, among others seemingly living in the apartment.

Batista and Zapatier call themselves “Scale Analysts” on LinkedIn.

They’re obviously part of Collards’ diminishing entourage. Their previous jobs? Up until they were hired by Scale, both worked as concierges around New York.