Fahour suffers in Latitude hack attack

Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.

 Hackers have delivered outgoing Latitude Financial boss Ahmed Fahour a send-off he’s unlikely to forget.

The KKR-majority-owned financial institution told the market on Thursday morning it had been the victim of a “cyber incident”, but not before the Mike Tilley-led board suspended trade in the company’s shares. These are scheduled to be brought back to market on Monday.

Incoming CEO Bob Belan, founder of Symple Loans (now owned by Latitude) is slated to begin work on April Fools’ Day – and there’s no irony in that, of course. Fahour is supposed to doff his hat on March 31.

Fahour has much riding on the Latitude share price staying healthy, or merely stable, for the foreseeable future. At last notice, he held 2.9 million fully paid shares that are no longer in escrow and worth $3.5m, based on Latitude’s last close of $1.20.

But his predominant focus is more likely to be with the 16.5 million call options that he holds thanks to a deal he struck when Latitude listed in April 2021. Still, his arrangements haven’t quite worked out according to plan.

Latitude’s outgoing boss, Ahmed Fahour. Picture: Ian Currie

The ongoing decline in Latitude’s share price since the float has left the call options at risk of becoming worthless. That was until Fahour hammered out an extension to the exercise date mid-last year, which bought him another 18 months.

Latitude’s shares need to be trading at $3.12 – the options’ lowest exercise price – for Fahour to find himself back in the money. And he’s got a deadline of September 2024 to reach that target.

A mighty ask, of course, given that’s more than double the share price’s current value.

We were curious, too, whether Fahour, Tilley, Belan, KKR’s Scott Bookmyer, and other directors on the Latitude board had been caught up in the cyber attack.

“Our investigation into this sophisticated and malicious cyber attack, and exactly which customers are impacted, is ongoing,” a spokesman told us. Make of that what you will.

ATO scrap an $800m headache for Optus

Never mind the class action lawsuit that Optus is facing, or the handful of reviews, inquiries, proddings and sizings-up that the telco is juggling over that catastrophic cyberattack it suffered in September.

It seems chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin is readying for yet another costly headache, with the telco preparing to defend itself before the Full Court of the Federal Court over a legal row with the Australian Taxation Office that could cost the company more than $800m.

The four-day hearing is slated for April 17, when Optus will mount its second appeal against a judgment over interest deductions on a $5.2bn loan provided by its British Virgin Islands holding company.

Messy with accounting jargon, the case, in essence, traces its way back to SingTel’s acquisition of Optus in 2001.

Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin addresses customers in a video.

It’s always been the ATO’s position that Optus should not be permitted, as attempted, to deduct $894m in interest that ­accrued on the loan. The original decision in favour of the ATO was appealed and lost by Optus last year, when Federal Court Justice Mark Moshinsky ordered the company to pay its tax bill, plus costs.

Moshinsky’s judgment concluded the loans extended by the BVI company to two Australian subsidiaries – to fund the 2001 acquisition of Optus – were not conducted at “arms length”, a term of legal significance too dry to unpack in detail here. Basically, it means multinationals need to treat their group entities as independent of each other.

The ATO’s case argued that Optus’s attempted deductions amounted to transfer pricing, a clever little method deployed by multinationals to divert profits and reduce taxable income between jurisdictions.

Crown Resorts found itself in a similar predicament a couple of years ago over a $362m transfer pricing claim by the tax man. That quietly went away once the company reached a settlement for “an undisclosed amount”.

Just not cricket

With few exceptions across his decades of public life, John Howard has always maintained an unswerving position on the mutual exclusivity of politics and sport, that the twain should never meet.

If, however, there was one memorable lapse – and can we really even call it that? – it was in 2003, when the former prime minister implored the International Cricket Council to shift Australia’s World Cup match out of Zimbabwe so it could be played in Kenya or South Africa.

That was over human rights and electoral abuses of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, at a time when Australia diplomacy had taken a severe line against the dictator.

That exception aside, Howard’s regnant beliefs on separating sport and politics appear to be no softer 20 years later. If anything, those beliefs have hardened.

Former prime minister John Howard speaks with Tom Switzer at a CIS event in Melbourne.

The reason this has all come up is that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has moved to co-opt a multitude of sporting codes into supporting an Indigenous voice to parliament.

It’s a matter that’s also clearly firing up Tom Switzer, executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies, who wrote of his displeasure with Albanese’s efforts in these pages on Wednesday.

“If (Albanese) succeeds, Australian sport risks being poisoned, because the matter will force a collision between a great pastime and identity politics,” he wrote.

That night, Switzer interviewed Howard at Melbourne’s Stamford Plaza, where the former PM praised the column (“Spot on,” were his words). With regard to political interference in sport, Howard said: “There’s an old Australian saying: ‘stick to your knitting’.”

That certainly sent a ripple of concurring murmur through the audience, among them the expected crowd of Lion chairman Sir Rod Eddington, the IPA’s John Roskam and former Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger.

Howard continued: “I thought the purpose of Cricket Australia was to run Australian cricket, the purpose of the football commission – AFL – was to run Australian rules football. The way in which leftist-inclined activist groups have captured the hearts and minds and enthusiasm of corporate relations departments of major companies and major sporting bodies is just appalling.”

Switzer responded soon after: “I just make the point: can’t the fans enjoy sport without political interference?” And Howard emphatically agreed. “Amen to that,” he said.

Sent packing

Election panic appears to be gripping NSW government staffers, with word spreading that they might have to clear out their desks at 52 Martin Place before polling date on March 25, as their passes will no longer be operational.

Talk about throwing in the towel already! Such was the potency of this rumour that it had to be hosed down by Samara Dobbins, a deputy secretary in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. We hear someone on the Labor side close to opposition leader Chris Minns even called DPC to query how the transition would be negotiated and how soon access can be provided. Not getting ahead of ourselves at all, are we?

“Some offices seem to think they need to vacate 52MP before the election and others have heard their passes at 52MP won’t work after the election,” Dobbins wrote, in a note distributed by Premier Dominic Perrottet’s chief of staff, Bran Black, downstream to other chiefs on Thursday.

“Neither of these things are true. Whether there’s a returned or new government we’ll work with you and the other CoS to determine a sensible time frame for people to pack up and vacate offices.”

Feels to us like mischievous Labor staffers ginned up this rumour. Well played, if true.