Oliver Curtis aims for Christmas home presence with Roxy

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Do they know it’s Christmas in Cooma Correctional Centre?

We’ll all be the wiser on Friday, when the video link is trained on 31-year-old inmate Oliver Curtis and whatever tinsel and other festive decorations may, or may not, be in the ­background.

Roxy Jacenko visits her husband Oliver Curtis in Cooma Jail.

The NSW Supreme Court has just been notified that Curtis, a Riverview old boy, will find out on Friday whether he’ll be ­released to North Bondi and his publicist wife Roxy Jacenko for Christmas.

The outcome of the appeal against Curtis’s year-long sentence for insider trading will be heard on the last day the court sits for the year.

That it is being heard before the court goes on a six-week break is a rare bit of good fortune for the Curtis-Jacenko couple, who have had a shocking 2016.

Roxy Jacenko and Oliver Curtis outside the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Now only two more sleeps ­before we find out if — thanks to the work of Bret Walker, one of Australia’s most expensive lawyers — their annus horribilis ends with a surprise happy ­ending.

Close quarters

Fairfax boss Greg Hywood seemed far from relaxed about the Domain-porn saga on Monday night at the Hotel Centennial in Woollahra at Taylor Street Advisory executive chairman Christopher Brown’s annual end-of-year dinner.

We hear robust descriptions by Hywood of this paper’s media editor Darren Davidson were plentiful.

Hywood’s online real estate business, Domain, and the presence of its ads on porn sites has in recent days been the subject of a lengthy investigation by Davidson.

Among those dining with Hywood — who arrived, looking like a bald Bono, wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket — were Fairfax events boss Andrew McEvoy, former Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon and Hamish McLennan, the chairman of Domain’s main rival, the News Corp-backed REA Group.

Just the face to trigger Hywood’s Davidson fury.

Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood. Picture: Aaron Francis.

Star turnout

The lure of sports stars Daniel Ricciardo and Adam Gilchrist proved to be a compelling one for several members of Perth’s elite this week.

Some of the city’s most prominent names were at the Monday night cocktail function held at the Blue HQ private marina in Fremantle by sandalwood producer TFS, which counts Ricciardo and Gilchrist as two of its “brand ambassadors”.

Among those in attendance was the night parrot of Australian billionaires, iron ore heiress Angela Bennett (last valued at $1.61 billion), who has always done her best to stay out of the public eye.

She may have been coaxed into attending by her son Todd, who bought Blue HQ from another prominent Perth family, the Kailis fishing dynasty, last year.

Also there was Mineral Resources chief Chris Ellison (worth about $413 million), who coincidentally bought Bennett’s old riverside mansion in Mosman Park in 2009 for $57.5m, at the time an Australian record.

Rhonda Wyllie.

The presence of Rhonda Wyllie and her beau, Carsales chairman and former Nine Network managing director Jeff Browne, made it a trio of richies in the room, with Gilchrist joking that Ricciardo had been waving to Wyllie in her apartment while he was racing around the streets of Monaco this year.

Kelvin Barry at Flemington Racecourse.

Kim Ledger, the father of late Hollywood actor Heath, copped a ribbing from former Guildford Grammar classmate and TFS chairman Dalton Gooding, while BHP Billiton’s vice-president of corporate affairs and TFS director Julius Matthys also took a break from fighting the WA Nationals’ proposed $3bn iron ore tax in order to enjoy the night.

No big deal

Gaming billionaire James Packer’s $600m Crown Towers Perth has already thrust its doors open to guests but tonight will throw a not-so-gala party to kick off the six-star hotel.

Packer was set to return to Oz for the bash but recent events around the detention of 18 Crown employees in China over alleged gambling crimes meant a lavish all-star bash was deemed a bad look.

Meanwhile, the corporate restructure of the $8bn-plus Crown empire into a local gaming company, an international offshoot and a listed property trust is clearly not entirely on ice.

Packer’s advisers, led by UBS banker Kelvin Barry, are still beavering away. At the end of last month, they created a fresh vehicle for the property spin-off, Crown Resort REIT (RE).

At the more modest end of property developments in Packerland, the billionaire’s pollie-turned PR Mark Arbib is finishing a rebuild on his family’s home in South Coogee.

The work included a full demolition and hole in the ground for a new three-storey home with a pool, which is a hop, skip and jump from the ocean.

Arbib’s wife is Macquarie bank assistant director Kelli Field, who is a former political staff member-turned-investor relations specialist.

All proving life can be good after politics.

Family fortunes

Uncertainty prevails on global financial markets after a year of worldwide political tumult.

And our Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (worth about $200m) is taking no chances when it comes to the management of his own considerable wealth.

Amid a frantic end-of-year political schedule, recent days have also seen the PM’s financial advisers rejig his substantial investment portfolio.

The new investments come after a range of exotic funds he and his businesswoman wife Lucy had previously stashed their money in came to an end.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull his wife Lucy.

Rather than let their wealth languish in the bank, the Turnbulls have invested in a grab bag of diversified offshore funds as a hedge against uncertain economic times.

Following the basic rules of diversity, the Turnbulls and their private companies have spread monies across Laurence Fink’s BlackRock funds that expose them to New York-listed risky small caps and less volatile, buy and hold stocks.

For good measure, they’ve also invested in funds that expose them to technology, bonds, the S&P 500 index and global opportunity funds, with Garrett Thornburg’s New Mexico-headquartered Thornburg Investment Management now taking care of a fair chunk of their money.

The Turnbulls have also revealed they have taken money out of Cayman Islands-based (but London-run) hedge fund Zebedee, which might help take some political heat out of the PM’s portfolio.

All very sensible.

If only we could get the Turnbulls’ financial team, rather than the motley crew on the Senate crossbench, to cast their eyes over the federal budget.