Australian television and its audience bid adieu on Thursday evening to Tracy Grimshaw, the unflappable host of A Current Affair for these past 17 years.
The speeches and refreshments in honour of Grimshaw ran well into the evening at Nine HQ, with words contributed by Nine’s director of news and current affairs, Darren Wick, and Tom Malone, Nine’s managing director of radio.
Newsreader Peter Overton told an amusing anecdote of how he once tried to relieve himself next to a car during reporting of a bushfire, only to be startled and caught out by Grimshaw who was staring at him from the vehicle.
The celebrations continued into the wee hours as Nine’s entourage made for a light spot of karaoke at the Pickled Possum in Sydney’s Neutral Bay. Unlike the inimitable Ding Dong Dang, late of Surry Hills, the crooning at the Possum is performed in front of all comers, not just in a private booth.
Thus eight bystanders on a lazy Thursday were forced to listen to Nine journalist Steve Marshall belt out I Touch Myself by The Divinyls, and, yes, the doyen of Australian television was obviously cajoled into singing a few numbers.
Apparently Grimshaw is quite a hit at Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walking, but the more memorable performance was Throw Your Arms Around Me by Hunters & Collectors.
“She was owning it. She was on fire,” said one of the few in the room late on Friday, still clearing the sea fog of a night well spent.
Meanwhile, Grimshaw’s replacement at ACA should be announced in the coming days, with Today Show co-host Allison Langdon said to be a lock for the gig.
Proxy targets weakest Links
Link chairman Michael Carapiet might have hoped the world had moved on from his five years at Insurance and Care NSW and the embarrassments that occurred on his watch. Alas, these stains on his corporate journey appear too striking for some ahead of Link’s AGM on Wednesday.
Carapiet is standing for re-election as the company’s chair but proxy adviser CGI Glass Lewis has stepped in to issue an emphatic rejection of his return, citing his days at icare as a compelling reason to vamoose.
It seems CGI Glass Lewis’s priority is to sever the unwieldy and tentacular reach of icare into the Link Group’s board.
Their quest to do so is certain to take more time and additional hacking.
Link’s managing director, Vivek Bhatia, was icare’s chief executive between 2015 and 2018, an era when the agency’s standards became so polluted that they were later termed “sloppy” by an independent review ordered by the NSW government. During Bhatia’s tenure as icare chief executive he failed to report a single gift or benefit received.
That might have been understandable had no offerings been made. Except four months after his resignation, Bhatia, in a single day, lodged 42 declarations correcting that record. “There is no explanation for this,” the review noted of this sudden display of compliance.
Retired Supreme Court justice Robert McDougall, KC, led the probe into icare and queried Bhatia’s grant of a substantial icare contract to Capgemini, a company run by a person with whom the CEO shared a friendship.
Neither Bhatia nor icare were able to produce a single document confirming this potential conflict had been declared. But who cares! Bhatia assured the McDougall investigation that he managed it all appropriately. Why even bother with such paperwork?
Bhatia is not up for re-election this year and neither is Peeyush Gupta, a Link NED and chair of Charter Hall who’s been on the icare board since the agency’s inception.
This is damning in itself. What has he been doing all these years aside from warming his hands against the fire of icare’s dysfunction? And this dysfunction continues, with the board deciding this month to scrap short-term bonuses for its 116 executives and replace them (the bonuses) with pay rises for everyone – whether or not performance targets were reached.
It’s for these reasons that CGI Glass Lewis has arrived at a verdict that board renewal is required at Link and that the well-remunerated Carapiet must be removed as a first step (his $472,327 is substantially higher than the median salary of $249,518 for ASX200 chairs).
“We view the matters disclosed in the (icare) Independent Review Report as demonstrative of governance malfunction across multiple fronts,” the CGI Glass Lewis report said.
“As we believe these matters rest with the chair of the board, and given the chair and the current MD/CEO’s former relationship at icare, we are recommending against the re-election of chair Michael Carapiet at the 2022 AGM.”
And this comes despite the current takeover activity at Link, where Carapiet’s input might have been important.
Canadian firm Dye & Durham has made a $1.27bn offer to acquire Link’s corporate markets and BCM business. Apparently Carapiet’s oversight isn’t necessary.
“As the 100 per cent takeover by Dye & Durham is no longer a strong prospect, we believe shareholders can now replace the Chair and that the benefits of a fresh set of eyes outweighs concerns of changing the board mid-negotiations to sell core businesses,” its report said.
As for a further winnowing of the board, the proxy advisers appear to have their gaze fixed on former Star Entertainment director Sally Pitkin. She isn’t up for re-election either but CGI Glass Lewis does pose the question of whether her presence remains “in the best interest of shareholders”, given the financial and reputational damage to Star casinos “experienced under her watch”.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.