Boe Pahari, who now heads AMP Capital, the $190bn global asset management arm of the troubled wealth management giant, apparently loves dancing on nightclub tables.
Video of him kicking on after an infamous dinner at Cafe Monico in London’s Soho a few years back was taken and presented to a 2017 hushed up harassment investigation.
But AMP would have clients believe that’s all changed.
Home in bed by midnight is the new objective of Pahari under the David Murray-led regimen.
Start the day with a cup of tea, even.
Murray, the former head of the government’s Financial System Inquiry and AMP chairman, recently promoted Pahari, fully aware of the independent investigation by top British QC Andrew Burns. The claims against the UK-based infrastructure equity boss eventually led to a settlement between AMP and the senior female private equity specialist.
AMP’s chief executive Francesco De Ferrari advised Pahari was remorseful and suffered a financial penalty, after it was deemed to be a “lower level breach of the company’s code of conduct”.
Currently bunkered down at Sydney’s 33 Alfred St, Pahari’s promotion came after last month’s retirement of Adam Tindall, a member of the Male Champions of Change Institute, a small group of business and government leaders focused on gender equality. He oversaw growth in assets under management by $43bn during the past five years.
The 58-year-old, Mayfair-based, UNSW-educated Pahari has been with AMP since 2010, with prior stints at Commonwealth Bank, Citigroup and ABN Amro.
Not sure how he’ll go with the jet lag when commuting Down Under, as he’s a sound sleeper who often runs to work at their Houndsditch office because he’s late. “I actually use three alarm clocks because I’m so bad at waking up,” Pahari told Infrastructure Investor last year in a profile on what he does in a regular day.
He’s a self-confessed email avoider, although he says he still ends up doing around 100 a day.
“People say — and I don’t know where they get the idea from — that I love the sound of my own voice. So yes, I do like talking on the phone much more than emails,” the brash executive advised.
“The single most important thing I do every day is talk to my people.
“They’re fantastic, and interacting with them and keeping them in an inspired way and encouraging them is very important.”
Ditto AMP Capital’s clients.
He has inspirational quotes lining his office walls, including from Tom Cruise’s Top Gun where the commanding officer, Tom ‘Stinger’ Jordan says to Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell: “Son, your ego is writing cheques your body can’t cash.”
He says he has about 10 meetings a day, before he settles into some late night television watching charismatic fictional characters Bobby Axelrod from Billions and Harvey Specter from Suits.
“I think by 12 I’m pretty much done for the day.”
Shop around
The member for Wentworth Dave Sharma has changed lenders on his Canberra investment property. He’s moved from the CBA to Westpac as the provider of the mortgage on the Barton property.
He told Margin Call he found it “cumbersome”, saying it took much longer than he’d expected. Sharma concluded the banks were back at their elevated post-royal commission caution as lenders look at borrowers for any potential fault lines.
“They checked all my recent Afterpay purchases,” said Sharma, an Afterpay shareholder.
His only big buy was a GPS watch, given he enjoys running and cycling — and the occasional workout in a local gym that he was happy to promote last week post-lockdown on Instragram at Regenesis Fitness in Edgecliff.
He wonders why Westpac took so long, with lots of back and forth, but that of course is the norm nowadays with banks taking a forensic look at even well paid applicants.
“Maybe they were checking my polling numbers,” said the politician who secured 51 per cent of the vote, some 2400 votes more the former member Dr Kerryn Phelps in last year’s election.
Bright spark
Energy Minister Angus Taylor reckons households ought be searching for electricity supply savings.
“We’ve got falling wholesale prices, that means there are often smaller retailers offering sharp prices.
“They’re seeing a reduction in their costs and they can pass that through to customers.
“This is the beginning of the second year of what we called the default market offer, which is a price cap, which we set a year ago,” Taylor advised.
Presumably at his Goulburn farm, Taylor advised he’d saved $180 using Energy Made Easy, the free federal government energy price comparison service.
The tool doesn’t cover Victoria, Western Australia or the Northern Territory.
“I shop around and all of those good things you’re supposed to do, but it still found me another $180,” Taylor told 2GB’s Ben Fordham.
Taylor said they’ve recently had the mathematical gurus from the CSIRO to get the cost savings formula exactly right.
Hunker down
Not such a bad place to lockdown. Postcode 3032’s most famous resident is the former Opposition leader Bill Shorten and his wife Chloe.
And unless the family is again staying at his liquidator mate Mark Mentha’s Portsea place, he’s presumably now bunkered down in his recently acquired five bedroom 1930s Travancore home.
It is the most expensive home in the inner north west patch of Melbourne where COVID-19 is running amok, amid the 36 suburbs across 10 postcodes.
The colonial estate, then occupied by Indian horse exporter, Henry Madden, took its name from the 1750s ruling house of the Kingdom of Travancore that lost their ruling rights in 1949 when Travancore merged with India.
Shorten moved the family of five closer to the CBD, but remained in his electorate of Maribyrnong, having upsized from Moonee Ponds last November. He sold for $1,655,000 and spent $3m.
They’d have escaped the lockdown if they’d stayed put.
Of course Travancore’s most famous resident was the late Arthur Calwell, the federal member for Melbourne for 32 years from 1940 to 1972, and the leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1960 to 1967.
Calwell’s Welsh grandmother, Elizabeth Lewis, settled in nearby Flemington after visiting the 1850s goldfields after she married an American, Davis Calwell.
Calwell, our first immigration minister, bought into the new Travancore subdivision in the 1930s. Four generations of the family have lived in the district including his only daughter, Dr Mary Calwell.
Shorten will be hoping he’ll be out of lockdown to attend parliament’s next scheduled sitting on August 4.
Education, education
Western Bulldogs 2016 premiership player Liam Picken has ventured into the business world after retiring from the game last year.
The former midfielder has joined AIA, the largest publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group, as a business development manager.
Picken positioned himself for a role in the finance industry during his decade-long AFL career, securing his master in applied finance from Kaplan Professional in 2013, having initially completing a bachelor of business at RMIT University.
Picken was forced to retire in 2019 due to ongoing concussion symptoms. He’s pledged to donate his brain to aid research in traumatic encephalopathy.
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