It’s been sitting with it for more than a month, but PwC Australia is finally ready to honour us all with the long-awaited and independent review of the firm’s governance and accountability – the one written by Ziggy Switkowski and commissioned in the wake of the tax leaks scandal.
Margin Call hears a midweek release is in the offing. Although let’s hope it’s not Wednesday, as the rumours have suggested – that’s when Qantas chair Richard Goyder and chief executive Vanessa Hudson face a Senate firing squad in Canberra over the government’s blocking of Qatar Airways flights into Australia.
That would be awful timing, with little chance of the Switkowski report grabbing enough oxygen while Goyder is being prodded and shouted at by Tony Sheldon over several hours. Or maybe that’s the point? Surely PwC, with its new-found commitment to transparency, wouldn’t play such a cynical game.
And it’s interesting, too, what this column is hearing about Switkowski’s findings and the backroom scrambling at PwC to manage its release. Margin Call understands that the former NBN chair may not have gone quite hard enough on the prior leadership, or as hard as global head office was hoping for, anyway – they wanted to see the 10 plagues of Egypt fall upon former chair Peter van Dongen and former CEOs Tom Seymour and Luke Sayers.
Switkowski seems to have concluded that while there were governance guardrails in place under Sayers, these were gradually eroded once he left in 2020. It’s also likely that PwC global won’t be totally exonerated by the report, meaning this little problem can’t be quarantined to just our island.
It’s why talks continue about disseminating a second set of documents alongside the Switkowski report. But these won’t have been written by the man himself. They’ve been written by toecutters in the C-suite who want to co-release an extra timeline and narrative of events.
These are said to blame the leaks, the mess, on Sayers and Seymour, while airbrushing any culpability on the part of corporate HQ.
Why else has Diana Weiss, PwC’s global general counsel, been camped out at Barangaroo these past few months (aside from racking up a sizeable bill at Nobu)?
Global PwC chair Bob Moritz will also be on hand to manage the circus when he arrives on October 3. But no sign of US chief executive Tim Ryan. Given that he’s a likely successor to Moritz, one can only guess that he’s being kept in a bunker, away from the fallout, despite his responsibilities for Australia and some of the companies ensnared in the saga.
Hearty party
Quite a turnout for Thursday night’s launch party of View Media Group, the real estate venture of Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz. They threw a bash on the rooftop of their office building in North Sydney where Catalano announced a milestone: that VMG had bought out the entirety of property listing portal realestateview.com.au, its stake in the unlisted company lifting from 78 to a 95 per cent ownership. Among the 400 people in attendance – mostly real estate agents and developers – were ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott and CFO Farhan Faruqui, which makes sense given ANZ has plunged $50m into the business. For that price you’d expect they’ll receive healthy leads on homebuyers requiring a mortgage.
No sign of billionaire Waislitz but his son Jake was seen near the oyster, champagne and caviar bar, along with Catalano and Waislitz’s long-time legal adviser, Jeremy Leibler, of Arnold Bloch Leibler.
Seven West Media’s Ben Jones was on hand, which is also sensible – the media company tipped about $100m into VMG last year. And expect to start seeing advertisements for the rebranded website – View.com.au – which is slated to go live mid-next week during the AFL grand final. Apparently Seven’s helped out a bit with the TVC ad space, too.
As for entertainment on the night, former Domain director Paul Tyrrell (now VMG’s chief marketing officer) supplied the introductions, with Catalano (a former Domain CEO) providing greetings and then handing over to CEO Toby Balasz, who gave a walk-through of the business.
Good times had by all, or so Margin Call was informed, and despite the presence of a marg bar and a millennial DJ – both of which bear the promise of a long night – the fun was over by a sobering 10:30pm.
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