NAB execs enjoyed exotic locations as a time bomb ticked in Docklands

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Multi-million-dollar executive get-togethers in San Francisco. Helicopter flights to luxury spa resorts in the Blue Mountains. Arabian nights under the desert night sky outside Dubai, with a bit of falconry and a camel ride.

Over the past decade, luxury offsite jaunts have been one of the great perks of working at the top tier of the $77 billion, Melbourne-based National Australia Bank.

That the international sojourns happened while NAB remained the little runt of big four banking was an uncomfortable truth for its more public relations-minded employees. International knees-ups don’t exactly pass the front page test.

“People are going to be sweating blood,” one person familiar with the NAB executive family tells Margin Call.

Welcome to NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn’s nightmare.

NAB CEO Andrew Thorburn had a horror week. Picture: Renee Nowytarger.

This week Thorburn’s bank was engulfed by allegations of a multi-million-dollar fraud, which — if true — may have occurred over more than a decade.

The stunning raids by NSW Police’s Strike Force Napthali occurred days before the next hearings of Kenneth Hayne’s royal commission into the financial services sector, which resumes on Monday.

Even more mortifying for Thorburn, the scandal snaked all the way back to his personal office.

Caught up in the allegations is the CEO’s deskmate Rosemary Rogers, his now former chief of staff, who sat all of 5m from Thorburn in the bank’s open-planned head office in Melbourne’s Docklands.

Rosemary Rogers, former chief of staff to NAB's CEO.

Almost no one had heard of the fortysomething Rogers outside of those that have graced the well-remunerated upper levels of NAB during the eras of Thorburn and his predecessor Cameron Clyne.

The mother of two, who is married to builder Anthony Rogers, made her first news headline on December 19, just before Christmas, when Margin Call revealed that Rogers had suddenly resigned from the bank, ending her unusually long period as chief of staff to the CEO.

“Rogers had worked in the all-seeing, all-knowing position for nine years, first under Cameron Clyne, then Clyne’s Kiwi successor Thorburn,” Margin Call reported, noting Sarah White, NAB’s executive general manager of talent and leadership, was acting in the role. White has since been made Thorburn’s permanent COS.

The following day Margin Call reported there was “an intriguing story emerging” behind Rogers’ surprise departure.

“We understand Rogers last week returned to work from annual leave and promptly met Thorburn. By the end of that encounter she had resigned,” Margin Call reported.

Indeed, Rogers had been on leave to move into her new $3.8 million trophy home in Melbourne’s Williamstown. More on that shortly, along with the rest of Rogers’ $6.2m property portfolio.

After the urgent head-to-head with his former chief of staff, Thorburn sent a note to his leadership team — the pin-stripped crowd that attended the sand dunes and Champagne off-sites — in which he described Rogers as “an institution at NAB”.

Rosemary Rogers' new home in Williamstown.

In the email — which people close to the CEO have since stressed to Margin Call was written in the early stages of the bank’s investigation into the alleged multimillion-dollar fraud — Thorburn acknowledged Rogers’s “enormous contribution over more than two decades”, the last nine of which were at the heart of the bank.

The COS gig gave her unrivalled information about NAB’s executive team, and its relations with the now Ken Henry-chaired board. “She knew everything,” one person with direct dealings with her tells Margin Call.

The job also gave Rogers intimate access to her boss’s life. As Thorburn noted in his December email: “She cared for me and my family.” In the same email, Thorburn noted Rogers had left after she confessed to a “lapse of judgment”.

That phrase ricocheted around the bank’s Docklands headquarters like a sniper’s bullet. What had she done?

NAB would not say.

Rogers didn’t return calls then. She still wouldn’t this week.

Knock, knock

A “lapse of judgment” looked like an understatement after the boys and girls in blue this week stormed the offices of the Human Group, the Sydney company paid by NAB to manage its executive retreats.

Commissioner Mick Fuller’s NSW Police, acting under the squad name Strike Force Napthali, also raided the house of Human Group’s owner Helen Rosamond, 42, seizing documents they are now reviewing.

No charges have been made. Margin Call is not suggesting the multimillion-dollar fraud allegations are true, only that they are being investigated.

Nor are we suggesting any wrongdoing on the part of Rosamond or Rogers.

NAB has refused to give Margin Call the date the bank began its commercial relationship with Human Group.

The bank stopped using the services in January — two months after a whistleblower contacted NAB, the trigger for Thorburn’s December tete-a-tete with Rogers.

Citing the police investigation NAB has also refused to say how much money was spent with Human Group, whose events ranged from ritzy international retreats, to humdrum corporate affairs in Sydney and Melbourne, to helicopter trips to the NSW luxury rural retreat of Wolgan Valley, the favourite destination of pop star Delta Goodrem and former Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke.

The extravagant nature of the executive services business means legal action against Human Group, should it occur, may produce shockingly bad headlines for Thorburn, his chairman Ken Henry, Thorburn’s predecessor Clyne and his chairman Michael Chaney, should their executive and board retreats be discussed in court, day by lavish day.

Trading up

When Rogers was urgently recalled to see Thorburn in December, she was moving into her latest property purchase: a four bedroom, fully-renovated home in Melbourne’s gentrified inner-city Williamstown, replete with an indoor pool fit for a top-tier banker. “We thought she must have been on the sweetest wicket,” one NAB insider tells Margin Call.

It was an upgrade from the more modest home the young family resided in at nearby Newport. After extensive renovation, the couple last year sold that property for $1.63m. It was Rogers’ second plunge into the Melbourne real estate market in 2017.

Last July, she forked out $701,000 for an investment apartment, also in the seaside suburb of Williamstown.

The buys took Rogers’ property count to four, with a total purchase price of $6.2m.

In 2015, the bank’s chief assistant and her husband paid $735,000 for a two bedder in Richmond, the year after they outlaid $1m for a holiday home in Bellbrae, just inland from Torquay and the world famous Bell’s Beach.

Like the homes that were to come after them, the couple’s initial buys were made possible with mortgages from NAB.

Reports this week have also focused on police assessment of ownership of a mysterious boat moored in Melbourne.

UK-born Rosamond was also amassing assets in her adopted hometown of Sydney and shuffling properties in her more than $10m real estate portfolio.

Just a few weeks before her Human Group offices were raided by NSW Police, Rosamond liquidated a $6.57m luxury harbourfront home that she owned at Mosman.

The property had previously been occupied by Geoff Rosamond, 49, who is a former director of Human Group and remains a shareholder of Human Group Holdings. His direct relationship with Helen remains unclear.

The Human Group boss has been living in a $2500-a-week rented three-storey terrace in Potts Point, which was also raided by authorities this week.

Records reveal Rosamond also owns a property in St Leonards that she paid $825,000 for a decade ago, as well as an investment home in Seaforth that she paid $2.65m for in 2010.

The North Sydney property is mortgaged to her Human Group, as well as to Westpac.

There are also two commercial properties that were previously owned by Human Group, but which are now in Rosamond’s name directly.

The two adjacent lots were bought in one line by Human Group in mid-2007 for $313,400, but then transferred to Helen in 2012 directly for a combined $294,000. Records show both sites are leased back to her company. It is not clear if any of this is of interest to the police in their investigation. Margin Call is not suggesting there is anything untoward about the arrangement.

Bucks stop with CEO

Strike Force Napthali’s next move isn’t clear.

It makes for interesting times for NAB’s $6.7m man Thorburn, who once again is on the hunt for someone to run his turbulent corporate affairs team.

After only one year in the role, Collingwood fan Nathan Goonan is leaving. Despite the industry’s political and reputational crisis, it took the bank an extraordinary 14 months to fill the role after it was last vacated in February 2016 by Paula Benson.

At least Thorburn has Bastion’s Brian Walsh, formerly at NAB, on tap to give external advice.

One of the people approached for the role last time around was Tony Warren, who instead went to work for Shayne Elliott’s ANZ, the rival Melbourne-based big four. After that, ANZ’s well regarded communications boss Paul Edwards left and this week emerged at Matt Comyn’s CBA. Meanwhile over at CBA’s Sydney-based rival, Brian Hartzer’s Westpac team has been joined by external advisers, including KMPG partner Paul Howes.

This week certainly won’t have helped NAB’s external recruiters as they once again phone the usual suspects to see if they might be interested in working at Docklands.

Next week looks like being a shocker too, as Hayne’s royal commission moves its focus to wealth management.

The hearings will give NAB’s head of wealth Andrew Hagger the dubious honour of being the most senior banker to so far appear before Hayne and formidable counsel assisting Rowena Orr.

And sitting above it all, with responsibility for the entire $77bn operation, including the handling of an alleged multimillion-dollar fraud with links to his office, is Thorburn.

That’s why they pay him the big bucks.