Sledge fund Elliott Management giving BHP a hard time

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Ken MacKenzie will preside over his first annual general meeting as BHP chairman on November 19. Will New York billionaire Paul Singer’s hedge fund Elliott Management turn it into a bloodbath?

Singer’s Hong Kong-based Elliott lieutenants were back in Australia last week, meeting with shareholders to drum up support for their re-engineered activist tilt against the Big Australian.

Also in the Elliott game plan — which is being run by its investment director James Smith and research director Nicholas Maran — is a search for directors with “fresh perspectives” to join anointed chairman Mac­Kenzie.

If Elliott can get traction with shareholders, its chosen directors will run for the board at the November AGM in Perth.

Nicholas Maran and James Smith from Elliott. Picture: Hollie Adams.

That’s unless MacKenzie brings them in the tent, which would be a marked change of approach to his Elliott dodge last month, when the activists made a surprise appearance at departing chairman Jac “The Knife” Nasser’s farewell lunch. What to do?

Elliott’s relaunched website “Fixing BHP” makes clear who are in its crosshairs: Nasser’s longest-serving directors, who, says the hedge fund, “have been involved in disastrous acquisitions and other poor capital allocation decisions”.

Three blue chip BHP directors — who were all mooted as possible replacements for Nasser — are believed to be on Elliott’s hit-list: Malcolm Broomhead (who is also chairman of explosives business Orica), Carolyn Hewson (a director of property heavy Stockland) and Lindsay Maxsted (chairman of Westpac).

A hedge fund-backed attack on any of those three would make for an extraordinary beginning to the MacKenzie era. But for the $3.3 billion New Yorker Singer, it’s just business as usual.

On the move

Moving house can be one of life’s most stressful events.

Just ask Sydney glamour ­couple Ellie and Charlie Aitken, who are now up to their third Sydney eastern suburbs home in a bit over a year.

The pair, who run their now Kerry Stokes-backed Aitken Investment Management, sold their Darling Point trophy home early last year for about $10 million, as the high-profile fund manager Aitken declared he was backing global stocks over Sydney property. The fund’s performance last financial year (up an impressive 17.6 per cent after fees) seems to have proved him right.

Since then the Aitkens have been renting $3000-a-week waterfront digs in Rose Bay, but are now off again, this time set for another rental nearby in Bellevue Hill. Time to go long removalists?

The moving doesn’t stop there.

There have also been three office moves in the past two-and-a-half years, with the Aitkens — whose business is now also backed and chaired by the former James Packer-lieutenant Rob Rankin — having also just moved AIM into a longer-term rental on Phillip Street.

When first launched in 2015, the ambitious funds management shop took up flash digs in a building on the corner of Hunter and Pitt. That was back in the days of Stokes’ $150m commitment, which never quite materialised.

Shortly after, the fund moved into Servcorp’s serviced office facilities at the MLC Centre.

But following the Stokes-Rankin backing they have now been able to secure a long-term lease for their new global HQ, where they will play with the $150m they now have under management.

With all that upheaval, is it any wonder the Aitken family needed a break earlier this month in Tahiti’s Bora Bora, which has been something of a hot spot for the Sydney set this Australian winter. Beats us why.

Do-it-yourself survey

The next federal election may be more than two years away, but already Member for Higgins Kelly O’Dwyer has moved to take the pulse of her historically blue-ribbon constituents.

O’Dwyer — just back from her short ministerial maternity leave — has engaged a fast-talking, female robo-caller to get inside voters’ heads.

The robo-caller asks all the expected questions, plus a couple more that reveal just what — other than new baby Edward — is keeping the Revenue and Financial Services Minister awake at night.

First up there’s stuff on local issues — crime, roads, public transport infrastructure and inappropriate development.

Then there’s the federal smorgasbord — the economy and jobs, climate change, same-sex marriage, the cost of living and tax.

Kelly O’Dwyer and new bub Edward. Picture: Nicki Connolly.

Next the pollster for O’Dwyer — who is married to UBS investment banker Jon Mant, currently on six months paternity leave — moves on to who the punters would vote for in Higgins, offering a selection from the major parties. Standard stuff.

But O’Dwyer, whose seat was subject to recent speculation about a tilt by Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff Peta Credlin, leaves it to the end to reveal what’s really troubling this Liberal mind: the march of the Greens on her seat, an attack led by Victoria’s current Young Australian of the Year Jason Ball at last year’s election.

O’Dwyer’s pollster asks: in a battle for Higgins between only the Libs and the Greens, who would you would vote for?

So who is paying for these insights?

It’s not federal president Nick Greiner’s cash-strapped party machine. Nor is it state president Michael Kroger’s in-the-red division, which is too busy fighting for control of the $70m Liberal-aligned Cormack Foundation cash box.

The phone poll has been left to the Higgins Federal Electorate Conference, chaired by Deloitte audit partner Mark Stretton. If you want something done ...

Frydenberg’s friends

Moving to the neighbouring Melbourne blue-ribbon electorate of Kooyong where local member Josh Frydenberg has been busy making appointments.

Environment and Energy Minister Frydenberg has just poached Daniel Caruso, a senior adviser from Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s office, to be his new chief of staff. Caruso, a former Treasury official, replaces Martin Codina, who has left to run corporate affairs at his old shop BT, the wealth arm of Westpac.

The new COS comes after Frydenberg appointed his colleague from his Deutsche Bank investment banking days, Steven Skala, to replace former RBA director Jillian Broadbent as the chair of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Deutsche Bank’s not their only connection. As recorded in the Member for Kooyong’s maiden speech, Skala introduced Frydenberg to the late, great Sir Zelman Cowen, Australia’s 19th Governor-General.

Also joining the CEFC board are Macquarie Bank director Nicola Wakefield Evans and Snowy Hydro director Leeanne Bond.

Latham brushed

Yesterday we asked, could Mark Latham soon be moving into chairman David Gonski’s Art Gallery of NSW? Hours later came the answer. No.

A portrait of the Labor leader turned media provocateur painted by Sydney street artist Knack — which had been tipped as a likely favourite for the “people’s choice” award — wasn’t selected as a finalist. Silenced again.