Stockbroker sees red over the Greens; New ERA of shareholder idiocy

Angus Aitken has become an ardent supporter of the conservative political action group Advance. Picture: John Feder

A year ago, prominent Sydney stockbroker Angus Aitken published a cutting client note that thoroughly chewed out the national carrier, Qantas, for a series of violations. Among these was harsh criticism of a “rubbish” and “sad-looking” meal of vegan zucchini fritters served up to him on a flight to Queensland.

Never known to be a great fan of vegetables, Aitken – if you will permit this horrendous segue – is now ramping up his campaign against unsatisfactory greens, be they on a plate or, yes, even in federal parliament.

Margin Call has learned that he’s become an ardent supporter of the conservative political action group Advance, which counts self-storage billionaire Sam Kennard and a few other shy Tories on the nation’s rich list among its deep-pocketed backers.

Advance also counts Sam Kennard among its deep-pocketed backers. Picture: Britta Campion

Former prime minister Tony Abbott and ex-ASX chairman Maurice Newman are members of its advisory council.

Aitken confirmed that he’d personally donated $200,000 to Advance and hosted a private fundraising dinner two weeks ago with a few high net wealth individuals, if only to shake down more dosh for the organisation and fortify its war chest ahead of the election.

The purpose of it all, he said, was to hobble the Greens’ vote come polling day and remove as many of its members from public office as possible.

“The Greens are a disgraceful organisation and a huge threat to the country,” Aitken said, accusing them of encouraging anti-Semitism, extremism, and threatening the economy with their “crazy schemes”. Among those plans are proposals for an annual wealth tax on billionaires, a 60 per cent tax rate for high income earners and a plan to increase the tax-free threshold to $32,100.

A separate donation, Aitken said, had already been made to Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party in the hope of preventing a minority government. In some forecasts, Labor may be forced to negotiate with the Greens, who could end up with the balance of power.

Aitken said the Greens, once an environmental movement of “tree huggers”, in recent years had morphed into a “divisive and dangerous activist machine led by Marxist radicals”.

And the average Australian had not yet twigged to this evolution, he said. “Hence the fantastic work Advance is doing showing people the true values of this group.”

Anyone wondering why Aitken would bother with a political blue clearly isn’t familiar with his fight-picking streak.

He fought and won against ANZ’s Shayne Elliott in 2016, and more recently he took on proxy advisers CGI Glass Lewis, calling them “absolute morons” for objecting to the board re-election of Cobram Estate founder Rob McGavin.

A couple of days later the firm changed its mind on McGavin. But who are we to say the two events are linked? YB

Table talk

Spotted! Aqualand chairman and Seven Group director Warwick Smith lunching at Love Fish, in Sydney’s Barangaroo, with Stuart Fuller, KPMG’s global head of legal services and chairman of the Asia Society.

Plenty to discuss, no doubt, given Smith’s vast experience on China (he was also chairman emeritus of the Asia Society that Fuller now runs).

Warwick Smith. Picture: David Swift

Smith’s priors include a stint chairing the Australia-China Council and the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations.

And it would appear to have been a week of Red Dragon-related meetings for the former Liberal Party minister.

On Thursday he was spotted in a private dining room at Rockpool with a visiting delegation from the China Energy Council.

Not much apple pie on the menu at Rockpool – a Smith favourite, ever faithful as he is to his roots in Launceston. YB

A new ERA in idiocy?

Never underestimate the boundless optimism of retail shareholders. Or the endless stupidity, the more cynical would say.

Take former uranium miner Energy Resources of Australia (please). Despite a valiant rearguard action from Willy Packer and Richard Magides, it is all but over for ERA’s 10,000 minority shareholders.

The pair failed to convince the Takeovers Panel to block the company’s 0.2c a share rights issue. The Federal Court has also rejected a bid by both men to join an ERA lawsuit aimed at overturning the federal government’s decision to cancel the mining licence over the Jabiluka deposit.

If Rio Tinto is the only taker in the rights issue, as seems likely, the mining giant will climb above a 90 per cent shareholding in ERA and then buy out the rest under compulsory acquisition rules. The only hope of blocking that is if Packer and Magides pump yet more money into a lost cause, which Packer has previously signalled he won’t do.

Lending weight to that is Packer’s recent selldown, which has seen the Perth fund manager drop 1.5 per cent of ERA’s stock into the market since July, reducing his total holding to 7.8 per cent.

Bizarrely, over the last two weeks – after ERA’s fate became crystal clear – Packer’s fund has found takers for close to $1m in ERA shares at an average 0.48c. The buyers will collect about $413,000 from Rio if the miner gets its way – a loss of about 58 per cent on average, or as much as 77 per cent for whoever bought 16-odd million ERA shares at 86c on October 16.

It’s always possible that some sort of hedge fund shenanigans are at play.

But Bloomberg trading data suggests that most of the recent buying has come through CommBank accounts – usually a pretty sure sign of retail punters at play.

If so, it’s probably the dumbest way to lose money we’ve seen this week. NE

Typos ’R’ Us

There wouldn’t be a lot of people reading through the annual report of ASX-listed Toys “R” Us ANZ, you wouldn’t think.

After buying the local rights to the name in 2020, following the infamous collapse of the US retail giant, the Australian version has done little more than bumble along losing money. With a market valuation of only $8.8m it is currently worth less than Richard White would normally spend buying a house for a new girlfriend.

But any long-suffering shareholder opening the latest annual report on Friday would have been in for a treat, as the company appears to have left the draft copy alone in the office creche before posting it into the ASX for release to the market.

Typos were still marked with a highlighter in the version that went live on the ASX platform, and an entire paragraph on the biography of non-executive director Teresa Smith was scribbled out with a pen.

In good news for the company, though, the report does appear to have been read by at least one person that wasn’t a journalist bent on taking the mickey, because a few hours later the errors had been spotted and a new version was in. NE