Solomon Lew stalks as Garry Hounsell preps Myer

Illustration: Rod Clement

It’s now a month out from new Myer chief Garry Hounsell having to front the market to outline the beleaguered retailer’s interim result.

Accountant-turned-executive chairman Hounsell has billionaire master strategist Solomon Lew, who commands 10.8 per cent of the Myer register, breathing down his neck and communicating directly with the retailer’s share register towards a spill of its entire board.

And this week has seen Myer management presenting to members of the company’s lending syndicate over renegotiation of its $420 million debt facility, which expires in November.

It is understood the current syndicate is led by Shayne ­Elliott’s ANZ, but that each of the other majors and at least one international lender also have some skin in the Myer game.

The debt facility is drawn down to about $150m and is governed by three covenants.

But there is only one that is occupying the minds of management, the banks and Myer’s ­auditors and that’s the one relating to net assets, which need to stay above $500m.

Myer has foreshadowed a writedown of its almost $1 billion in intangibles, which is expected to directly threaten a breach of the banking covenant.

We don’t expect this week’s discussions with lenders to be the last before sign-off of Myer’s interim results and rollover of its debt facility.

Solly must be loving this.

Baker rises again

Everything old is new again at the Edgecliff, Sydney headquarters of John McGrath’s under-the-pump real estate agency McGrath.

Property manager-cum-artisan baker Geoff Lucas has been reincarnated as the boss of the involuntarily slimmed down agency.

We won’t need to wonder what McGrath’s traumatised share register will make of that.

Lucas is back to right the ship under new chairman and former Seven exec Peter Lewis, after the newly listed McGrath hit rocky terrain after Lucas’s own brief stint outside the real estate industry as chief operating officer of Sonoma Baking Company.

Joining Lewis on the McGrath board is Sydney lawyer Andrew Robinson, the man who took the fight to the Australian tax office on behalf of Paul Hogan.

Lucas was quick yesterday to distance his approach from the just ended Cass O’Connor era, talking up his deep industry expertise after the company’s all-too-brief period with former Chandler Macleod Group chief Cameron Judson at the helm.

Former McGrath chairwoman Cass O’Connor. Picture: Hollie Adams

The latest CEO recruit starts on Tuesday and will trouser a base salary of $500,000 with the chance to add $250,000 in short-term incentives and another $250,000 worth of long-term incentives.

Lucas has more than a dash of company founder McGrath’s trademark optimism flowing through his veins. The long-term part of the package is not due to vest for three long racing seasons, sorry, years, with many punting the agency will be in private hands well before that period is up.

Laying Nats bets

Local SportsBet boss Cormac Barry really is determined to go out with a bang.

Barry is set to hand over the reins of Australia’s biggest online bookmaker to Barni Evans mid next month, but Barry looks to be driving his bookie bus right to the finish line.

Yesterday afternoon SportsBet was straight out of the blocks taking punts on who would be the next leader of the Nationals thanks to Barnaby “weatherboard ‘n’ iron” Joyce finally bowing out amid allegations of sexual harassment.

That was a somewhat more palatable market than SportsBet’s previous efforts on the deputy PM, with the bookie earlier this month taking bets on the name of Joyce and his former staffer Vikki Campion’s unborn child.

The baby is due in April.

Trouble is, SportsBet’s haste yesterday to beat its opposition meant it got the date of the Nationals’ party meeting (scheduled for 8am Monday) wrong.

“Leader elected in a party-room ballot on 25th Feb 2018 (bets void if no leadership ballot during this period),” SportsBet’s featured bet read.

But the meeting is on Monday, February 26.

We guess that means they’ll have to refund punters’ money.

Bell sounds alarm

Promotion is a critical tool in attracting attention at the small end of the resources sector.

But junior player Australian Mines and its boss Benjamin Bell are finding out the hard way what happens when promotion goes too far.

The company has been put through the wringer by the ASX in recent weeks over what should be a landmark agreement between the company and Korean heavyweight SK Innovation.

It started when details of the agreement happened to appear in The West Australian ahead of the official announcement.

Margin Call loves tip-offs, but not so much Dominic Stevens’ ASX — particularly when, in a query from the exchange, Australian Mines confessed to the leak.

By late Wednesday, when Australian Mines lodged its latest corporate release with the exchange, the document was only up there a few minutes before the ASX took the extraordinarily rare decision to pull it from the platform.

The offending material — which last night was still available via Australian Mines’ website — includes a $5bn valuation of the metal in the ground at Sconi thanks to the SK agreement. Such estimates are a major no-no under the JORC rules that govern ASX-listed ventures and are considered particularly heinous.

Bell has previously used ASX “speeding tickets” to make his pitch to investors, finding real traction with punters when comparing the company’s Sconi nickel-cobalt deposit with the Sunrise project of Clean TeQ Holdings, the ASX plaything of Canadian billionaire (and former Steve Jobs roommate) Robert Friedland.

Now it’s the cumulative effect of Bell’s latest transgressions that are believed to be concerning the ASX.