Oroton flies the flag in the East

Millionaires cruise ship The World moored off Port Douglas

Accessories retailer Oroton is set to open in Sydney’s upmarket Double Bay next week.

It coincides with their autumn/winter campaign with Vanessa Axente, once again the face of the brand that dates back to the 1930s.

The 116sq m store will offer both men’s and women’s accessories ranges. With Oroton’s strong eastern suburbs web buyer base, Margin Call gleans it will be a pop-up store in Eduard Litver’s Cosmo Centre.

Litver bought the retail component from the Stamford Group two years ago with plans for the leasehold island precinct to be a “sophisticated, world-class venue reminiscent of its indulgent past with a modern twist”.

Oroton is in keeping with his vision, with the latest lines from creative director Sophie Holt.

Holt is the granddaughter of former prime minister Harold Holt and Dame Zara Holt, who’d set up her boutique Magg in Toorak Village and then Double Bay in 1962 before her husband was in the top job.

Henriette Countess von Wenckheim managed the Knox Street location, with Marion Hall Best decor, set just opposite the Cosmo, next to John Lane menswear.

By her own admission, the future first lady of fashion could neither cut nor sew, but she was creative.

Sophie Holt started at Sportsgirl, then Witchery, Seed and Country Road. She’d been a freelance consultant for Oroton under the Lane family.

Investment banker Will Vicars saved the loss-making fashion group two years ago with his $25m investment.

Across its website and 41 bricks-and-mortar stores, Vicars’ aim is for $300m annual revenue, up from $90m in 2017, within five years.

It’s Oroton’s first strip store for several years.

Faggs struggling

The Fagg sisters can’t seem to catch a break in the unforgiving corporate world.

Jenny Fagg has given notice she’s stepping down in April from her short-lived role as chief risk officer at basket case AMP, which has lost $6bn in cash flows.

Margin Call understands she has some fintech start-ups on her agenda. Jenny took the chief risk officer job in early 2018, one of the most unenviable at the time given the looming harsh spotlight of the royal commission. Her departure had been planned for several months now, AMP advised, some 14 months after Francesco De Ferrari started as the CEO.

“I feel very comfortable and, while it’s sad to see Jenny go, we are working very collaboratively to ensure that no ball is dropped,” De Ferrari said of the inopportune departure.

She had relocated from Canada, where she had been an executive at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for four years, buying the penthouse in Kings Cross block Elan for $10.5m.

Her South Yarra-based older sister Kathryn Fagg is just hanging in as the Boral chairman.

Her retiring chief executive, Mike Kane, will be stepping down early having downgraded guidance for this financial year, the fifth downgrade in two years.

Kathryn, who also sits on the NAB board, succeeded Brian Clark as Boral’s chairman in 2018.

Both sisters have previously revealed their own life-and-death battles with cancer.

It was in 2010 when Jenny made headlines when stepping down from a senior role at ANZ with her breast cancer diagnosis.

For months Jenny fought the disease from the office, but could physically do so no longer.

In 2013, Kathryn faced the same fate, diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, one of the rarest and most aggressive cancers.

During her last stage of radiation therapy, Kathryn was contacted by the federal treasury to see if she would consent to joining the RBA board.

She met then treasurer Wayne Swan, who had gone through cancer treatment, and then served a five-year term.

World bobs in

The Australian billionaires were nowhere to be seen midweek when The World, the world’s largest private residential ship, cruised through Port Douglas, on its two-month journey circumnavigating Australia.

There was no sign of the likes of Ros Packer or Gina Rinehart, who might be awaiting the arrival in their own port, avoiding the choppy conditions from the Uesi cyclone.

Packer was gifted a double apartment from son James, before it got a serious makeover, while Rinehart owns a penthouse having been introduced to the ship by the late engineer Bob Sparke.

The World is viewed by some as an invitation-only Noah’s ark for the filthy rich. Two letters of recommendation from the existing 165 owners, other than the seller, are required before buying approval is given.

Many of Australia’s wealthy own aboard the luxury cruiser that requires a minimum net worth of $US10m ($14.5m) before they will consider any purchase application.

There were plenty of Americans who soaked up the sauna-like, near-empty Port Douglas township.

They came full of stories of their crocodile sightings on Thursday Island and fishing exploits in the Coral Sea.

They all got an onboard lecture from conservationist John Rumney, a pioneer of eco-tourism on the Great Barrier Reef.

No face masks among the cruisers, but a hand cleanse was required on boarding the tenders at Ghassan Aboud’s Crystalbrook marina.

Last sighted at Hamilton Island, The World arrives in Brisbane on Tuesday.

The ship first set sail in 2002. However, a year later its apartment owners were beginning to mutiny, as it was overrun by rowdy short-stay tourists. Paying guests are no longer taken.

Margin Call recalls being on it in 2003, the first time The World, with its Nina Campbell-decor, sailed into Sydney Harbour. It was a rather quick voyage up from Melbourne, made memorable when there was a murder mystery night.

Over the years owners have included Rothschild Australia chairman Trevor Rowe, property developers Bob and Margaret Rose, the Nutrimetics founders Bill and Imelda Roach, Fitness First co-founder Tony de Leede, and motivational speaker John Demartini, who bought his $3m one-bedroom with his late wife Athena Starwoman that they moved into after selling their Trump Tower apartment, unnerved after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The cruise began 2020 in Hong Kong, before embarking on a jungle expedition in the islands of West Papua in Indonesia.

There are 15 Australian port calls, ending in the Kimberleys.

Ex-Trad pad for rent

The investor buyer of Queensland deputy state premier Jackie Trad’s controversial Woollongabba cottage has now listed it for rent.

The buyer, Yue Wu, wants $550 a week, which would reflect a 4 per cent yield. The 1910 house was bought for $695,500 by VBT Investments, a company with shareholders Trad and her lawyer husband Damien van Brunschot, in March last year.

It was resold at the same price in September and settled just before Christmas. The cottage purchase by Trad had not been notified to the state parliament’s Register of Interests within the time limit, a requirement by all politicians. There were questions raised due to its proximity to the nearby Cross River Rail project that Trad had been overseeing. The house purchase was made just a week before the final route of the project was announced.

The Crime and Corruption Commission eventually found “no evidence … that supported a reasonable suspicion of corrupt conduct”. “However, as a general proposition, failing to declare and properly manage a conflict of interest creates a corruption risk,” the CCC found.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stripped Trad of all Cross River Rail responsibilities.