Money to be made from website woes

Peter Nicholson Margin Call cartoon for 16-10-2015. Version: (Original) COPYRIGHT: The Australian's artists each have different copyright agreements in place regarding re-use of their work in other publications. Please seek advice from the artists themselves or the Managing Editor of The Australian regarding re-use.

Perpetual boss Paul Skamvougeras can finally be added to the iSelect list of people turning a dollar from the underperforming insurance website comparison business.

His lunch companion James Packer tipped PBL-Microsoft joint venture Mi9 into iSelect way back in 2006. James was gone by the time Mi9 cashed in its chips in iSelect’s notorious 2013 float, but his mate/sparring partner David Gyngell was around to collect the winnings as head of Nine.

Hoping for a quick profit, just before the IPO Perpetual pumped $10m into iSelect at $1.85 a share … which is what it listed at, so no love there.

However, Skamvougeras still fared better than anyone who bought into the IPO — shares haven’t approached the listing price since. So much for promises it would “shoot the lights out”.

Undeterred, Skamvougeras has been snapping up iSelect shares on behalf of his clients since early last month, paying about $1.40 for most of them.

With news of a takeover bid from private equiteers Providence Equity Partners sending iSelect stock north of $1.70, he’s already ahead (apparently the market is untroubled by the simultaneous installation of a third CEO since listing).

And with analysts expecting any bid to top $2 a share, Skamvougeras could do better.

Meanwhile, John Brogden, the boss of director’s union AICD, has cut his losses on this whole online insurance caper.

In August he quietly resigned from the board of NIA Limited, which ran the health.com.au fund connected to iSelect.

Investors in NIA including Spotlight owner Morry Fraid, prominent criminal QC Robert Richter and Mao’s Last DancerLi Cunxin stand to lose most of the $30m they pumped into the NIA adventure, which ended with a whimper in July when the fund was sold to GMHBA.

iSelect also took a $10m writedown on $50m it’d loaned to NIA to set up the fund.

Brogden had been planning to quit NIA in January, when he started the AICD gig, but stayed on to complete the GMHBA sale. NIA is now in the process of winding itself up.

As easy as ABC

New Communications Minister Mitch Fifield not only has big shoes to fill in replacing Malcolm Turnbull, he also has a few other empty seats to which he must hastily turn his mind.

Turnbull kicked off the search for two new ABC directors way back in June, with the process being run by an “independent nominations committee” comprising commentator Janet Albrechtsen, former deputy Liberal Party leader Neil Brown, David “Who Gives a” Gonski and former diplomat Ric Smith.

The short list of candidates pulled together via recruitment firm Watermark Search is believed to have stalled with the committee, which itself will soon become an issue for Fifield — next year Gonski and Smith’s terms come to an end too. Elsewhere at the national broadcaster, if you want a shot at Mark Scott’s job running the place from next year, applications to Egon Zehnder close on Sunday after Turnbull made it quite clear the former Fairfax exec wouldn’t be getting another shot. Fifield reminds us that officially that gig is decided by the ABC board.

But if all that doesn’t float your boat, consider life top of the table at lower-case obsessed nbn co, a $210,000-a-year gig filled by former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, but whose term there expires next October.

Whether the nuclear physicist wants another go overseeing the broadband rollout remains to be seen.

Do as I say, not as I do

In between touting disruption and innovation (drink!), new PM Malcolm has been declaring his government has a “big open data agenda”. Thrusting open the doors of government databases was of “critical importance”.

Sadly, it seems even parts of his government that deal daily with “big data” have yet to get the memo. How else to explain the decision by Mathias Cormann’s Finance Department to refuse Margin Call a peek at the scoping study bankers Greenhill prepared for the sale of ASIC’s company registry?

On advice from Mal’s department of PM, the study was declared a cabinet doco, exempt from pesky FOI requests.

Media meetings

Seven West chief Tim Worner was fresh off the Canberra flyer last night in time for Telstra boss Andy Penn’s Telstra TV launch in Sydney. But also in Canberra for a series of meetings yesterday were none other than newish Channel Ten chief Paul Anderson and even Fairfax Media’s latest tag team Greg Hywood and Nick Falloon.

[e-mail]
[e-mail]