Peter Costello a lame duck in the Nine chair?

Nine Entertainment chairman Peter Costello joined the board in 2013.

Nine chairman Peter Costello is likely to nominate for another three-year term when shareholders gather for the company’s annual meeting in several months. If successful, Costello’s tenure will be extended to 2026, giving him 10 years as chair and 13 years on the Nine board, which he joined in 2013.

An admirable stretch, to be sure, but Margin Call hears there is agitation for change on the shop floor of the media company, and apparently from people outside of it. One person showing interest to relieve Costello of his duties is MA Financial chairman Jeff Browne, an influential corporate figure and former MD at Nine who worked under chief executive David Gyngell (and very briefly under Eddie McGuire).

One small impediment for Browne is that he’s yet to receive any contact from Spencer Stuart, the firm that’s headhunting to fill the board seat vacated by former Fairfax chairman Nick Falloon last year. Then again, Spencer Stuart is the same mob that was tasked with finding a fresh CEO for the AFL, an endeavour so comically glacial in its pace that Browne’s phone might only ring in a few months’ time.

Or perhaps not at all, if Costello has anything to do with it – and we have no doubt the former treasurer is aware of Browne’s intentions and credentials in boardroom brinkmanship; in 2021 Browne successfully dispatched Collingwood Football Club chair Mark Korda, the co-founder of KordaMentha. That job is his now.

Margin Call put to Browne the suggestion of a tilt at Costello’s position. He said: “There is a search on for a vacant position and so far I have not been contacted by the people who are searching for a replacement director.

“But, of course, the Nine Network and businesses are a large part of my business life and I enjoyed that time immensely.”

Make of that what you will. Of course, if Browne does hope to succeed Costello then he’ll need the blessing of Nine’s largest shareholder, Bruce Gordon, represented on the board by WIN chief executive Andrew Lancaster. Too soon to tell where Gordon stands on Browne, although the two are well-acquainted, having negotiated affiliation agreements between WIN and Nine when Browne was MD at the network.

Margin Call contacted Costello for his input, but in the undying words of Simon Crean, he lacked the ticker to respond.

Birthday bash

Former ASIC deputy chair Daniel Crennan KC looked to be in high spirits while celebrating his birthday on Saturday with a few dozen pals at the 18-Footers in Sydney’s Double Bay.

Margin Call happened to be nursing a few restoratives at the venue when we spotted the imposingly tall Crennan, scarf looped artfully around his neck, working a roped-off section of the bar with former federal MPs Tim Wilson and Jason Falinski, latterly the chair of Procare Group. Liberal senator Andrew Bragg was said to have been invited but was allegedly caught up elsewhere with the party’s preselection skirmish, won by NSW Liberal president Maria Kovacic.

Former Australian Securities & Investments Commission deputy chair Daniel Crennan. Picture: Kym Smith

No shortage of lawyers in attendance, of course, as well as Brian Price, founder of FEX Global (where Crennan has been working as a group executive since February) and a snappily-dressed Matt Lee of UK litigation funder Burford Capital.

Crennan, the son of former High Court justice Susan Crennan, left ASIC in 2020 after a minor scandal over his relocation allowance from Melbourne to Sydney in 2019. He was exonerated of any wrongdoing in that matter but by then he was already gone from the agency.

Since then he’s been running boutique consulting firm Credi but briefly turned up at Adam Blumenthal’s EverBlu Capital, later raided by federal police months after Crennan had already left. No sign of Blumenthal at the 18-Footer’s, meaning Margin Call and our associates were, technically, the only visible skunks at the party.

The bash seemed to reach its peak once Crennan commandeered a microphone and briefly silenced the jazz band and the pickled club membership to raffle off a meat tray to a lucky guest.

Off their trolleys

Liberal senator Jane Hume seemed to get rather bogged down in the weeds with Rob Stefanic, Secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services, over the trays used by visitors to hold their wallets, mobile phones and keys as they pass through security to enter the building.

“I find it very strange that there are still people who clean the trays when you walk through security,” Hume said during an estimates hearing last week.

“Yes, we’ve now stopped that,” Stefanic replied.

Mystery solved? Not even close. Stefanic saw fit to approach Hume during the morning tea break and beseech her to let him correct the record. Hume recommenced the hearing granting that request.

“I think we need to solve this mystery,” she said, “because I‘ve just been inundated in my office with calls … about the fact that it was all going on this morning.”

Jane Hume. Picture: Sarah Marshall

Rob Stefanic. Picture: AAP

Stefanic said he had misspoken. “The trays have continued to be cleaned in some parts of the building. They were not when I walked in. I was of the impression that we had ceased the cleaning, but that is occurring today.”

The end of the matter, surely? It seemed so, at first, with proceedings mercifully veering onto more pressing topics. But Hume wasn’t done.

“Can I ask once more so that we can clear the great tray-cleaning mystery of 2023,” she insisted. “Has there been a directive from the department to cease cleaning the trays on entry to the building?”

Stefanic: “There has been an instruction from me to cease cleaning of the trays on entry to the building.”

JH: “When will that tray cleaning cease?”

RS: “Immediately.”

JH: “So there will be no-one cleaning the trays on entry to the building tomorrow. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Enter Labor Senator Louise Pratt: “What if someone vomits in a tray?”

Stefanic: “There will be serious repercussions if somebody is still cleaning trays.”