Ruffling of feathers in Sydney Swans box

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Investment banker Andrew Pridham shirked Chinese Premier Li Keqiang while Seven West CEO Tim Worner kept his distance from his billionaire proprietor Kerry Stokes.

They sure are an interesting bunch on Pridham’s Sydney Swans board, as was made clear at the AFL club’s first game of the season at the SCG on Saturday.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Malcolm Turnbull at the Swans match on the weekend.

At least fellow Swans director Sam Mostyn was predictable. The ambitious company director — who sits on the boards of Virgin, Mirvac and Transurban — was absent from the SCG on Saturday because she was watching the AFL Women’s grand final up on the Gold Coast.

No surprises there. As well as being the AFL’s first female commissioner, Mostyn is reportedly not impressed that chairman Pridham has not stood Worner down from the Swans board in the wake of the ongoing sex-and-expenses legal drama with Worner’s former lover Amber Harrison, which will migrate to Melbourne’s Federal Court on Thursday.

Pridham was more surprising. The boss of investment bank (and ASX aspirant) Moelis didn’t find a minute to pop into chairman Tony Shepherd’s SCG Trust box. As well as Premier Li and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Pridham could have caught up with Gui Guojie, the Chinese billionaire who partnered with Gina Rinehart to buy the Kidman cattle empire. So much for investment bankers being hardwired to network.

And what of Worner? Stokes was chaperoned to the Trust by his commercial brain Bruce McWilliam (the PM’s good friend and the chief tactician on the Harrison thermonuclear situation) and Stokes’s sinophile adviser, Warwick “Hydra” Smith.

There was also no sign of Worner at the Swans chairman’s lunch that Pridham hosted in a separate SCG corporate box.

We gather the Seven boss was instead monitoring the first week of the network’s AFL coverage at Chez Worner, the Manly pile he bought with his wife Katrina last year for $9.5 million.

Food for thought

Today’s the day of this masthead’s fifth Global Food Forum, an all you can eat event for Australian agribusiness at Crown Melbourne. This year it might not be just the speakers making headlines.

We gather Laura McBain, the ousted chief executive of milk marketer Bellamy’s, and the strong-willed Tasmanian investor backing her restoration, Jan “The Black Princess” Cameron, will both be along for presentations by Visy executive chairman Anthony Pratt, Woolies CEO Brad Banducci and Liberal grandee Andrew Robb.

Jan Cameron at the Bellamys meeting last month.

That could make for some fun questions from the floor.

But don’t count on Rob Woolley, the chairman Cameron rolled at the Launceston-based Bellamy’s, making the trip from Burnie.

The former accountant Woolley didn’t even make it to last month’s Bellamy’s extraordinary meeting at which he was rolled by Cameron and her hedge fund gang.

Mum on merger

What the roughly $350m merger of tech businesses Afterpay and Touchcorp lacks in size, it makes up in tangled corporate governance.

After the passing of founder Adrian Cleeve in November, cloud-based software outfit Touchcorp has been run by executive chairman Mike Jefferies.

Mike Jefferies.

As it happens, as well as being the interim CEO and chairman of Touchcorp, Jefferies is also a director of executive chairman Anthony Eisen’s payments outfit Afterpay.

So how is Jefferies handling his tangle of responsibilities as work continues on the proposed merger, first announced in late February? Is he still attending Afterpay meetings as they discuss how to handle Touchcorp?

We don’t have a clue. Jefferies hadn’t answered our inquiries as we went to print last night.

Also unclear is the reason for Hatim Tyabji’s departure from the Touchcorp board — announced to the ASX yesterday — after 13 years service. There was no mention of it when notices were sent out for the tech company’s AGM, which will be held on Monday.

It’s an odd look for a long-serving director of a company engaged in merger talks. What happened? No word from Touchcorp on that either. Don’t be shy.

Doing it tough

Nick Cater’s Menzies private enterprise collective launched the first phase of Tony Shepherd’s eponymous review at KPMG’s offices in sunny Parramatta yesterday.

Considering the drubbing chairman Shepherd’s Greater Western Sydney Giants had recently been given by the Adelaide Crows, the businessman was in a remarkably good mood. There’s nothing like intergenerational fiscal robbery to put an AFL thrashing into perspective.

It’s not only the federal budget that’s in sorry shape. Cater spoke candidly about the Liberal-aligned think tank’s finances. Seems they’re almost as sorry as the state of Tony Nutt’s federal Liberal Party.

“At the moment, I have to say, for the program we have in mind, we are running without a budget,” said Cater, as he rattled the can for private and corporate subscribers.

Happily for the Menzies executive director there was some serious money in the room in the form of Michael Crouch.

Michael Crouch reads the Shepherd review.

With a fortune conservatively valued at $312m, Crouch made his money with water heater business Zip Industries. Chris Hadley’s Quadrant Private Equity took control of Zip in late 2014 and, on the advice of investment bankers at UBS, Macquarie and Citi, is looking to float the business.

Although it seems Crouch is paying more attention to Australia’s narrow and concentrated tax base than the Quadrant gang’s Zip roadshow. Cater, and his Menzies chairman Tom Harley, will hope the Zip tycoon gets even more interested — and invested.

Lashing of Libs

Parramatta was awash with Liberals yesterday. While Geoffrey Winters, Peta Seaton, Andrew Bragg and Chris Rath discussed Australia’s fiscal outlook up at KPMG’s offices, former Liberal mayor Ned Mannoun was getting on with business.

Ned Mannoun.

Mannoun — who was the Liberals star, but unsuccessful, local candidate in Mark Latham’s former seat of Werriwa in Sydney’s southwest at the 2016 election — is now working at real estate giant CBRE.

The associate director was yesterday spotted heading to platform three at Parramatta train station, heading towards the Liverpool council area he used to rule.

Not quite Canberra, but the right direction.

Liveris to rescue

Meanwhile in Canberra, who should be spotted ducking into the Senate entrance of Parliament House yesterday evening but outgoing Dow Chemicals boss Andrew Liveris.

The 62-year-old son of Darwin likes nothing more than jetting around in the company’s Gulfstream 650 private jet to explain the world to political leaders.

Last year Liveris was one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest supporters before a hard pivot to Donald Trump after November 8.

Andrew Liveris.

And last week, in between meetings with former BHP chairman Don “Don’t Argue” Argus, Liveris made his way to Spring Street to tell Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews off over his gas ban.

Ministers in the Turnbull government should get a reception. After all, the Dow boss last year coughed up $8.5m to buy a pad in the prime ministerial Sydney harbourside suburb of Point Piper. And, really, aside from Jay Weatherill, who can help but like Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg?

We gather Liveris will be back today — likely with his good friend and Dragoman Tom Harley — for further meetings. A solution to Australia’s energy crisis can only be days away.