New croupier on the cards for Crown

IS Russell Crowe going to get his wish after all?

The hirsute Kiwi phone-chucker famously took to Twitter to slam the chief executive of James Packer’s Crown Resorts, Rowen Craigie, as a “pelican” who needed ‘‘to start looking for a new job’’ after alleged comments made by Craigie at a NRL grand final function.

Craigie subsequently said his comments about NRL premiers the South Sydney Rabbitohs, which sometime Gladiator Crowe co-owns and Packer is about to buy in to, had been taken out of context.

With the final now two weekends ago and emotions subsiding to normal levels following the Rabbitohs’ victory, all seems to be settled between Hairius Maximus and Craigie — but the former may still get his way in the end.

Completely separate to the Pelican Affair, the whisper ahead of Crown’s AGM in Perth this week is that Packer has his eye on his Australian casino boss Barry Felstead to succeed Craigie in the top job.

Felstead has rocketed through the ranks of the casino empire, promoted from CEO of Crown Perth last year amid talk Packer was impressed by his star from the west.

Craigie has also been buried this year in negotiations with the Victorian government to extend Crown’s gambling licence, which was successfully secured in August for other 17 years to 2050.

So the time could be right for a new head croupier.

Trouble brewing

FALLOUT from the court stoush between agribusiness giants Cargill and Viterra over the quality of malt produced by Joe White Maltings has reached the world of boutique brewing.

Cargill bought Joe White from Viterra, a subsidiary of Swiss-based commodities trader Glencore, last year. It alleges Viterra supplied customers with malt that didn’t measure up to contract specs and then altered chemical certificates to cover its trail. Viterra denies the allegations.

The brew-ha-ha has upset small brewers, who pride themselves on only using top-notch ingredients to produce their fancy ales.

But in a letter to customers, Peter Meddings, the boss of Bintani, which supplies yeast, hops and malt to microbrewers, said the problems were historical and “do not relate to food safety”.

He said that since Cargill took over Joe White in November, the quality of the malt had improved and “as the new season barley begins to come through, you will see appreciable improvements in the quality of malt being delivered”.

“The malt today is a far better malt than I believe any other malting company in Australia is producing,” he told Margin Call.

Boxing match

IT is no secret there is no love lost between the two Melbourne billionaire brothers-in-law Anthony Pratt and Raphael ‘’Ruffy’’ Geminder when it comes to the packaging industry.

Much to the excitement of competition tsar Rod Sims, Pratt’s Visy Group and Geminder’s Pact Group have been at each other’s throats in recent years to win market share.

And now Pratt has had a big win in the box wars, with Visy said to have pinched from Pact a $55 million per year contract with drinks giant Lion, owned by Japanese outfit Kirin — which must have made the Pratt family’s regular Friday night dinner catch-ups a touch more interesting of late.

In another family ties twist, Geminder’s loss is something of a gain for wife Fiona, who owns a one-third stake in Visy.

Asked last year about losing a customer to Visy, Geminder replied: ``I don’t think there is any difference between Visy and any other competitor.

“Losing a customer is a painful experience, period. It doesn’t matter where the pain is. It is like saying, ‘Is it more painful if you smash your finger whether it is a thumb or a pinky?’ They are all fingers.’’

Foreign affairs

BAD times for forex mob Pepperstone, which readers may recall was used by insider trading duo Lukas Kamay and Christopher Hill to place bets on foreign currency movements.

The bets reaped $7 million because Hill, who worked at the Bureau of Statistics, had the inside running on economic data.

In May, when the dynamic duo were charged, Pepperstone owner Owen Kerr was happy to chat about how he used social media to help bust Kamay and Hill.

Kerr, who didn’t return Margin Call’s call, might be less happy with yesterday’s news from the corporate watchdog, which has forced Pepperstone’s Japanese operation to commit hara-kiri. While Pepperstone proudly unveiled a dedicated Japanese-language website last August “so that our Japanese clients can interact and access our services in an efficient and functional manner”, it turns out it somehow neglected to get a licence from the country’s Financial Services Agency.

This despite Pepperstone being “tremendously popular with Japanese clients”, according to a press release at the time.

The company has agreed to shut down all Japanese accounts by the end of the year.

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