Sezzle next in the fintech raising line

Founders of buy now, pay later company Sezzle CEO Charlie Youakim (left) and chief revenue officer Paul Paradis.

Move over Afterpay. Sezzle, yes Sezzle, is set to raise funds — the next fintech payments company with ASX equity-raising intentions.

There’s whispers it will seek $80m through Ord Minnett, which will simply tap the dumbstruck world of hitherto napping stockmarket investors.

Sezzle shares have been trading around $6.95 after the fintech’s second-quarter update, in which it reported that merchant sales had risen 58 per cent to $US188m ($267m).

Active consumers using Sezzle jumped 28 per cent to 1.48 million in the June quarter.

With its motto “engaging the next generation”, Jessica Simpson, Akira and Jared Lang are three of its 16,000 merchants. It has the standard split your purchase into four interest-free payments over six weeks. No fees if you pay on time.

Sezzle’s Minneapolis-based co-founder, Paul Paradis, has just been promoted to the role of president, its co-founder chairman Charlie Youakim advised on Thursday. Veronica Katz, from PayPal, will take over the chief revenue officer duties.

Heaven knows where Sezzle gets its name from.

Paul Lahiff is the local director of the start-up that had 226,000 users in the US and 3000 merchants on its 2019 ­listing.

Twiggy lands station

Andrew and Nicola Forrest’scattle empire expansion in the Kimberley came on Thursday, some 140 years after his great, great uncle Alexander Forrest explored the north of Western Australia.

The Forrests will pay about $30m for the 220,000ha Jubilee Downs and its 11,000 cattle, which will become part of their gate-to-plate Harvest Road Group beef business that has the globally renowned expert on ­humane treatment of livestock, Temple Grandin, as a consultant.

The Forrests will be working with and for the traditional custodians of the land, the Yi-Martuwarra people.

“We recognise the Yi-Martuwarra have been the guardians of this sacred country for tens of thousands of years,” they said in a statement.

The purchase coincides with some cultural revisionism, as in 1879 Alexander Forrest named the nearby King Leopold Ranges after Belgium’s King Leopold II, an evil despot with no actual connection to Western Australia. While not knowing his true character, Forrest was recognising Leopold’s interest in exploration. They will be renamed the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges.

Buyer interest also reportedly came from the Salerno family, the Brett family and the MacLachlan clan. Margin Call gleans the only serious foreign interest came from South Africans Nico Botha and the Langenhoven family.

FIRB board in focus

Illustration: Rod Clement

The capacity of the Foreign Investment Review Board to better reflect community thinking is weighing on some influential Coalition strategists as next week the five-year term of Alice Williams concludes.

No word from inside the Treasury or Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s office on whether Williams gets another term, or if it’s time for a new member of the board that decides approvals for foreign investment.

Williams’s term has seen a heightened voter backlash to many approvals by an electorate that barely tolerates foreign investment, but certainly not foreign ownership. The 2015 leasehold sale of the port of Darwin by the Northern Territory government to Chinese interests escalated these concerns, although the FIRB was on the periphery rather than the final decision maker.

Williams has enjoyed some three decades in the corporate world, including her current directorship at Cooper Energy and Djerriwarrh Investments. Her former directorships include Ansett Australia, JPMorgan and NM Rothschild. She has been a consultant to companies in the Gulf states.

The big opportunity to shift the mood comes when the term of its chairman, David Irvine, finishes in December. During the pandemic, many investments that did not previously require screening now do.

Hayes signs on

TV presenter Liz Hayes has signed on with Michael CasselGroup, signalling a renewed push into talent management by the Sydney outfit.

Liz Hayes, who will continue with 60 Minutes into her 25th year, has been an enduring consummate professional in media circles.

Seems she’s keen for a few side hustles via the boutique management business that Michael Cassel is overseeing. He’s been representing former PM Julia Gillard and former Olympian Lord Sebastian Coe, the latter signing on in 2017.

Cassel trained with the late doyen Harry M. Miller during his teens, taking the train from Kiama to work in Miller’s Cathedral Street, Woolloomolloo office, just down the hill from his current Potts Point premises that he leases from Lucy Turnbull.

Meanwhile the live entertainment company is producing the worldwide touring production of Disney’s The Lion King, and will also premiere the musical Hamilton at the Sydney Lyric Theatre in March next year.

West Village knight

Michael Fuchs, who may be the white knight at LJ Hooker, resides in New York in the heart of the West Village. He’s best known as the business partner with his childhood mate, Aby Rosen.

The 12th-floor apartment owned of the RFR Holding co-founder and wife Alvina was bought two years ago from late-night host Seth Meyers at $US4.35m. Their 1000 square foot (93sq m) apartment with a real fireplace and a sunken living room had previously traded in 2013 for about $3.5m.

The 302 West 12th Street complex was marketed as “the ultimate” West Village address, with former celebrities including actor Glenn Close having called it home.

Fuchs co-founded RFR Holding with Rosen, accumulating iconic New York trophies such as Lever House and the Seagrams Building.

Given it’s something of a litigious city, plenty of court cases involving their holdings have occurred over the decades as the pair built RFR into a $20bn real estate portfolio.

After dumping plans for a $400m float, Janusz Hooker, who owns the majority of the business, was hoping to steal a march on his rivals by unveiling the LJX-Lab, his proptech development vehicle.

Fuchs arrived as an adviser in 2017 to help provide global insights into products being created in LJH’s then new research and development vehicle, LJX-Lab, which has since hit trouble with high costs and low returns.

Fuchs sat on the advisory board, which included Freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie, Black Bird Ventures founder Bill Bartee and Grenville Turner, the London-based director of real estate listings site Zoopla.com.

A TasFoods fight

The departed TasFoods executive chairman Shane Noble is going out swinging.

He’s lodged an application with the Fair Work Commission making allegations against the listed food and beverage firm and three of its remaining directors.

Noble had been a non-executive director at TasFoods since 2017, and its executive chair since early 2018. But last week the company directors Jane Bennett, Alexander (Sandy) Beard and Roger McBain decided his time was up as its chairman. Noble then quit as non-executive director on Wednesday, alleging adverse action had been taken against him. He’s claiming compensation plus damages for non-economic loss.

The board is fighting the allegations.

Noble managed TasFoods’ acquisition of dairy products supplier Betta Milk last year.

The board did see two new directors join the table last month with the arrival of former Villa World boss Craig Treasure and Ben Swain, partner of Tasmanian law firm Murdoch Clarke. Swain was nominated by substantial shareholder Jan Chapman.

It’ll be a frosty AGM on July 23, with the fallout costing the shareholders 5 per cent in Thursday’s market.