Seven deal with Harrison hangs in balance

Illustration: Rod Clement.

A settlement between Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media and its CEO Tim Worner’s former mistress Amber Harrison last night hung in the balance.

It is understood the parties, who have battled it out for more than seven months, were poised to sign a final deal. But it is thought final documents were still not signed by late last night.

It is believed the Stokes-chaired Seven West board were presented with a final version of a settlement last week that would give a $50,000 payment to Harrison’s lawyers Patron Legal.

In return Harrison would apologise, not to Seven, but to those women named in her explosive Australian Human Rights Commission complaint made back when she was represented by Michael Harmer’s scarlet legal shop.

The settlement could be signed by both parties as early as today, seven months after Harrison’s nuclear attack on the media company in December and almost three years after her relationship with Wornerfirst rocked Seven.

A deal would head off the five-day Supreme Court trial between Seven West Media and Harrison, scheduled to begin on Monday. The saga could today become ancient corporate history — unless, of course, one side has an overnight change of mind.

Watching the till

Staying with billionaire Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media, which was back in the Supreme Court of NSW yesterday as the broadcaster pursued its former executive John Fitzgerald over alleged fraud against the media group.

The action against Fitzgerald, Seven’s former commercial director of programming, alleges a sustained effort to extract money from the listed group over 14 years.

Fitzgerald set up several companies that allegedly falsely invoiced Seven for services that were never rendered, with Fitzgerald authorising payment. Seven believes he stole $8 million from the group.

It’s not quite of the proportions of the Plutus tax scandal that has rocked Chris Jordan’s ATO, but far from loose change.

At Seven’s interim results in February, proprietor Stokes was forced to declare “he was watching the till” in the wake of a range of expenses scandals at the company.

These have also included alleged fraud in Seven’s Los Angeles office, which was settled internally, as well as the controversy over former executive assistant Amber Harrison’s credit card expenses while working for Nick Chan, who has since left Seven and, more recently, Bauer Media.

Further to expenses at Seven, it looks like the proprietor has had enough of watching the till himself.

The mogul’s media empire is in the market for an “expense management administrator” to be based at Seven’s Eveleigh office where the Harrison-Tim Worner liaison was sparked — so goes the tale — by a tray of sandwiches.

The role would be responsible for administration of SWM corporate credit cards, managing the day-to-day operation of the expense management system and assisting in the strategic development of how Seven deals with expenses.

Up for a challenge?

Applications close at the end of July, just ahead of the release of Seven’s results next month.

Brotherly love

Ahmed Fahour has just three weeks left licking stamps in the top office at Australia Post, before the $5.6m man drives out of its Maserati-appropriate car park on July 28 for the last time.

Fahour might have hoped that his brother Ali Fahour, who until Wednesday was diversity boss at Gillon McLachlan’s AFL, could have been along to the farewell drinks planned for execs and associates at the end of the month for the head postie.

But that’s not likely now.

Aussie Post is a major partner of the AFL’s diversity program that was run by Ali, who’s out of a job after king-hitting an opponent on the field last weekend.

The AFL Aussie Post “Community Inclusion Partnership” is designed to promote the benefits of social inclusion and diversity, but the deal comes to an end at the end of this year.

That means its renewal will be a matter for new Post boss Christine Holgate when she takes over in September.

Ahmed’s career has previously collided with his family. In 2014, he donated a $2m Aussie Post bonus to the Islamic Museum of Australia in suburban Melbourne, which was founded by his brother Moustafa Fahour, who ceased as a director mid-last year.

Speculation is now running hot that Ali Fahour will turn up next as diversity manager for Amazon Australia.

Until then, it’s strategy meetings for the pair at Ahmed’s $10m holiday shack on the beach at Sorrento, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

Family business

After a six-year innings in politics, Bay Warburton has returned to his old stomping ground, the private sector.

Warburton — who up to former NSW premier Mike Baird’s January epiphany was Baird’s chief of staff — has just signed up to Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz’s $7 billion property outfit Mirvac.

In August, Warburton starts as Mirvac’s head of stakeholder relations, just the role for a man famous for his pastoral manner.

Commercial property is something of a family business. His father Dick Warburton was the chairman of billionaire Frank Lowy’s Westfield Retail Trust, which was later refashioned into Scentre.

Meanwhile his old boss Baird is a few rungs up the ASX ladder at Andrew Thorburn’s $80bn NAB, while good cop Warburton’s offsider in the Premier’s office Nigel Blunden (aka “bad cop”) has gone out on his own, setting up lobbying shop Blunden & Associates.

Gore blimey

Colourful Queensland property developer Craig Gore was already having a shocking
year, even before what looks to be a nasty road accident.

Less than three months after a pursuit by Greg Medcraft’s corporate cop ASIC led to charges of 12 counts of fraud and three charges of acting in the management of three corporations while disqualified from doing so, Gore seems to have been involved in nasty vehicle collision. We hear his vehicle ran into a tree up around Port Hinchinbrook in far north Queensland.

The case against Gore — the son of Gold Coast pioneer Mike Gore — returns to Brisbane Magistrates Court next Friday.

Craig Gore’s car came off second best after hitting a tree.

Wallaroos rule

When under-pressure Australian Rugby Union CEO Bill Pulver and his chairman Cameron Clyne think of the “game they play in heaven”, it might be the burgeoning women’s arm of the code that springs to mind.

After all, the women’s seven-a-side team were the ones who came home from Rio with the first ever gold medal in women’s rugby.

Off a low base, women’s rugby has all the momentum in Oz right now and yesterday that was on show at a $500-a-head lunch at KPMG’s Barangaroo base to celebrate female success and increasing interest in the sport.

Pulver is managing declining crowds and sponsorship dollars for the blokes, as well as battling whether to drop one of the ARU’s five “Super rugby teams”, but yesterday he was handed a $200,000 cheque for the girls from the Australian Rugby Foundation that will help send the Australian women’s 15-a-side team to the world cup in Ireland in August.

ARF director, Buildcorp founder and indefatigable supporter of women in rugby Josephine Sukkar handed over the dosh, and said the money would also allow the Buildcorp Wallaroos to play a warm-up tournament in New Zealand.

Also at the lunch was QIC boss Damien Frawley, KPMG heavyweights Tony Mulveney and Jenny Clarke, Macquarie Telecom chief David Tudehope and former NSW opposition leader Kerry Chikarovski.

The ARU board now has three high-profile women — former Carnival Australia boss Ann Sherry, former Federal Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick and former Microsoft Australian chief executive Pip Marlow.

It has some wondering if the ARU might soon have a female president.

All they can do pray.