Pie Face board spill could be a bloodbath

Illustration: Peter Nicholson

BLOOD may flow like tomato sauce at a meeting next month of shareholders in fast food franchise Pie Face.

Founder and former Wall Street banker Wayne Homschek faces being evicted, with his fellow directors asking shareholders to remove him from the board at the February 12 meeting.

Pie Face failed to earn a crust and went into administration in November. Last month, creditors agreed to a bailout and Homschek stood down as CEO, but remained a non-executive director.

That deal now seems to have been half-baked.

Ticket to Davos

HAPPY little Vegemite Kevin Rudd is off to the Swiss Alps next week, part of an Australian ski troop invading the slopes of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum talkfest.

Margin Call hears the former prime minister, who is the new president of the Asia Society’s Policy Institute offshoot, may even give a speech or participate in a panel session.

However, there’s as yet no Rudd on the WEF program.

Other Aussies off to Davos include Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, incoming Westpac boss Brian Hartzer, Visy executive chairman Anthony Pratt and retail billionaire Solomon Lew.

They’ll be rubbing shoulders with everyone from bar-hopping German Chancellor Angela Merkel to hip-hop star Pharrell Williams. It’s not known if Pharrell’s famous oversized hat will be there.

Bromley on board

MEET the elusive international businessman whose financial alchemy turned $HK1 (about 16c) into a $185 million parcel of shares in PNG’s Steamships Trading Company.

According to the website of Steamships, where he has been a director since 2000, Sir Michael Roger Bromley has 40 years experience “operating and advising companies in countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, Russia, China and Papua New Guinea”.

He also speaks Tok Pisin and — at least some of the time — lives on a boat.

The share parcel represents 19.99 per cent of Steamships, a PNG conglomerate that runs everything from hotels to shipping and is dual listed both there and in Australia.

Swire, the globe-spanning group that has interests in everything from shopping centres in Florida to Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific, owns about 70 per cent of Steamships.

But until this week, the owner of the 19.99 per cent stake, held in a nominee account at broker Bell Potter, was undisclosed.

Now, a substantial shareholder notice lodged by law firm Gadens on Sir Michael’s behalf shows the shares are held in a complex network of companies and trusts in Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.

In an equally complex seven-step process, Sir Michael restructured the offshore empire, giving him control of the Steamships shares.

Only one of the steps involved paying any money: step two, where Sir Michael paid $HK1 to buy 0.1 per cent of Hong Kong company Main Capital International — one share — from a company in the BVI.

“I don’t really know the details, because it’s his personal details,” Steamships chairman Bill Rothery, who is the head of Swire’s Australian arm, told Margin Call.

“But he has held effectively in trusts and various other nominee companies those shares in Steamships, which he didn’t have to declare because of the trusts and nominee structures he was using.

“He’s obviously collapsed, changed, done something to those trusts and nominee companies so that he does have to declare them — and that change presumably has cost a dollar.”

Sir Michael couldn’t be located and Gadens declined to comment.

BHP nets Byers

BHP Billiton keeps on poaching: the big Aussie’s latest recruit is Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association boss David Byers, who joins as vice president of government relations and public policy in March.

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