Two more names to depart Fortescue; Tony Shepherd and Nick Politis marvel at Super Bowl
While staff at Twiggy Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries have described working at the place as something akin to The Hunger Games, given the number of recent management departures Margin Call suggests the pop culture franchise that Fortescue most resembles is “I’m an executive … Get me out of here!”.
You can add another couple to the list. Margin Call understands group manager of communities at Fortescue, Heath Nelson, has entered the departure lounge, and FFI’s manager of global resources, Nadia Butler, has headed off to join Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill – as you probably would if your job was to try and fill the gaps created by the turnover at the company.
That’s on top of the departures revealed in The Australian on Monday – which include well regarded head of funding Penny Stonier and FFI commercial manager Bethwyn Cowcher. Non-trivial losses, you’d think, given Twiggy is trying to lock down hundreds of agreements across the world to develop renewable energy projects, to be funded by hundreds of billions in debt deals.
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Hottest tickets in town
Just what was going through Macquarie Specialised Asset Management chair and “go-to” company director Tony Shepherd’s mind as he saw rapper 50 Cent hang upside down at the Super Bowl halftime show and belt out In da Club?
Or how about the inner musings of car salesman, rich lister and chair of the Sydney Roosters Nicholas Politis, as Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre joined to belt out Tupac Shakur’s classic hit California Love?
It is unclear which side Shepherd and Politis take in the whole “east coast vs west coast” feud that has overshadowed hip hop for decades, but they should be fully up on what middle-aged hip hop fans are into these days after experiencing it first hand at the Super Bowl 56 overnight.
There, sitting near the 30 yard line at the spectacular SoFi Stadium in LA to see the Los Angeles Rams versus the Cincinnati Bengals, was Shepherd, who is also the chair of AFL team GWS and chair of the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust.
Speaking briefly to Margin Call after the final siren that saw the Rams win, he explained that he wasn’t all up on how the rules of the game work – does anyone outside the US truly get it? – but he did marvel at the spectacular recently built $7bn SoFi Stadium and how it was an amazing stage for the football final.
Asked his thoughts about the halftime entertainment which was a tribute to some of the greatest hip hop and rappers of all time, Shepherd said he did enjoy the performances by Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and an upside down 50 Cent. But that also it wasn’t really his kind of music.
Anyone who sits next to Shepherd at one of his next board meetings – his list of directorships is too long to list here – please by all means bend his ear about 50 Cent or ask him to sing Snoop Dogg’s Menulog jingle with some of the moves he learned at the Super Bowl show. Just don’t ask him about if he is “east coast” or “west coast”, you don’t want that kind of trouble.
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The woes of Weiss
Sydney socialite Adriana Benhamou Weiss – facing 12 charges of having falsified financial records down at the Downing Centre courts on Tuesday – appears to have brought in the big guns to defend herself. She’s engaged celebrity lawyer RebekahGiles, who has previously acted for former attorney-general Christian Porter and ex-Australia Post boss Christine Holgate. Weiss, a fixture in Sydney’s eastern suburbs social scene, is defending herself against the charges while all of Sydney – those who travel in the right circles – are ready with popcorn and bubbly on the standby to watch the proceedings.
The corporate regulator alleges she directed an employee of her interior design business Benhamou to create fake financial records about the company, showing payments made to suppliers and contractors that had – in fact – not happened.
Weiss, as Margin Call reported on Saturday, had previously been in disputes with wealthy businessman Neville ‘Croaky’ Crichton, who claimed she had been engaged to furnish the $45m Point Piper home he shares with his wife Nadi Hasandedic, but that the furniture never arrived.
We’re now reliably informed that matter has been settled.
But it’s been a long road for Weiss – once on the organising committee of Gold Dinner, an event attended by the who’s who of Sydney life from John Symond and Amber Keating to Skye Leckie and Lucy Turnbull – since the collapse of her Benhamou Designs business in 2018.
Documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission by administrators at Ferrier Hodgson later that year concluded that Weiss had “permitted the company to incur debts in the order of $7.5m at a time when the company was insolvent”.
Then again, if there’s anyone who can get a client out of a tight spot, it’s likely to be Giles.
And good thing too for Weiss, who was last spotted some distance from the Downing Centre at Parisian institution Maison Russe (where 30 grams of Beluga caviar runs to some $550).
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Mean streets
Staying in Sydney’s east, spare a thought for the pearl-clutchers in genteel Woollahra, where the local council on Monday evening was due to vote on a motion to remove “racism not welcome” signs from the streets. Reason? “Our local government area has had no reported racist incidents that would justify these signs in our streets,” huffed the motion put by former Woollahra mayors Peter Cavanagh and Toni Zelter and councillor Mary-Lou Jarvis, the Liberal Party’s vice-president.
“Locals say the signs give a false impression that Woollahra locals are racist, while there has been no evidence presented to that effect,” the notice reads. “On streets where these signs have been erected, locals have been made to feel like racists.”
Cavanagh, we are reminded, last made headlines after apparently ordering an Australian flag be flown on the bonnet of the council-owned Mercedes which drove him to and from his mayoral duties. Nothing could be more fitting for a Knight in the Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem.
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Libs’ big night flops
It was a bleak night on Saturday not just for the Liberals in NSW facing big swings in state
by-elections, but also for those in Melbourne, faced with empty fundraisers.
News in from Enterprise Victoria’s Grand Gala, hosted by Jolimont Global Mining Systems investment chief Charles Gillies and party president Robert Clark, was that the turnout to see former British prime minister Theresa May was a bit … light on.
“Less than 100 people and they had a Queen cover band at the end, but everyone had left so it played to an empty venue,” one correspondent informed Margin Call.
At $1000 a head, it wasn‘t a cheap night. Up for auction? Lunch at parliament with Liberal MP Jason Wood and Queensland senator Amanda Stoker.
Then there was a Penfolds Koonunga Hill Cab Sav 2007 – signed by Julie Bishop and May – a guitar signed by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and an unidentified magnum of champagne bearing Scott Morrison’s signature.
The former British PM then helped shake the can for a smaller, more intimate function on the Mornington Peninsula the next day for the Liberal candidate for Flinders, Zoe McKenzie, and state Liberal candidate for Hastings, Briony Hutton.
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