Streaming service Guvera hits dud note for investors

Peter Nicholson Margin Call cartoon 10-02-2016. Version: (650x366) COPYRIGHT: The Australian's artists each have different copyright agreements in place regarding re-use of their work in other publications. Please seek advice from the artists themselves or the Managing Editor of The Australian regarding re-use.

Contrary to the impression given to investors in streaming music service Guvera, JPMorgan is not prepping the company for an IPO and didn’t work on a $100m raising last year.

Guvera is just one part of the heady world of Darren Herft’s globe-spanning Gold Coast “private equity” mob AMMA. There are lavish parties with pop stars; conferences in Dubai and Hawaii; sponsorship deals for the tennis, the racing and The Voice; and even a rock’n’roll venue in downtown Los Angeles.

But Guvera’s overseas empire appears to be built on a network of serviced offices, while at home AMMA lacks one of the usual pillars of an Aussie investment house: a financial services licence of its own. That’s not against the rules but it is unusual.

With his AMMA executive chairman hat on, Herft claims to have raised $145m from clients of his network of accountants, handing the money over to Himself in his role as executive chairman of Guvera.

In ads for a “CEO shareholder update” held at Melbourne’s Olsen hotel in June last year, investors were told of JPMorgan’s involvement and promised that AMMA’s model meant there were “no commissions payable, therefore higher returns to investors”.

However, Guvera’s 2015 annual report shows it paid Herft’s AMMA Private Investment more than $7.7m that year in “referral fees” and “commission payments” for capital raisings.

Instead of having its own financial services licence, AMMA and Darren’s brother Denham are authorised reps of Melbourne’s Lotus Securities, which ran into trouble with the corporate plod in 2013 after one of its advisers allegedly forged client signatures.

Lotus’s phone has been disconnected. Phone trouble is common in AMMA-world: Margin Call tried repeatedly to chat to Robina HQ, where no Herfts were found.

The Singapore number is “not in use” while in Honkers calls end at an answering machine.

Guvera’s pricey PRs, Edelman, weren’t able to raise anyone either.

No safe place

Broadspectrum chair Diane Smith-Gander must be riding the emotional rollcoaster, with the gloss of her new role as chair of Safe Work Australia surely diminished by the detention centre operator’s share price tanking 14 per cent to $1.09 yesterday. Such a contrast to a little over a year ago, when her Spanish suitors at Ferrovial offered $2 for the then Transfield Services, only to be sent back to Madrid by Smith-Gander.

Again Ferrovial’s dashing Santiago Olivares is considering whether to let his more recent $1.35-a-share cash offer lapse now that his target’s key Nauru and Manus Island detention contract has been extended for just a year (not five) and exposed to competition.

The Safe Work role at least must comfort the chair that she still has friends in Canberra, having missed out on the Tourism Australia chairmanship last year amid concerns over publicity from her role in the detention centre contracts.

Broadspectrum will report its results on Monday.

Happy as Larry

Entrepreneurial Dodo founder Larry Kestelman’s superyacht Vegas has been holding court and tying up the waterways at Melbourne’s Central Pier at the Docklands in recent days, providing guests of the millionaire property developer with the red carpet treatment.

Kestelman’s LK Holdings is developing the Capitol Grand in South Yarra, which will incorporate the residential LK Tower, being promoted by Hollywood’s Charlize Theron.

Kestelman sold Dodo in 2013 for almost $230 million and has been splashing out cash since. Not content with mere ownership of a team, late last year he paid about $7 million to take majority control of the National Basketball League itself.

Food for thought

But his guests won’t be able to visit one of Melbourne’s most storied culinary haunts, with the ‘’closed’’ sign adorning the cafe at the bottom of premier office tower, 101 Collins Street.

Capitanos, as it has been known for the past year, is no more after owner Roberto Scheriani closed his doors at the end of last year, never to reopen — much to the lamentation of the likes of Rod Eddington, John Wylie, Robin Bishop and other Melbourne banking leading lights.

Before rebadging in late 2014, Scheriani’s establishment — then The Italian — was the go-to location for the city’s power diners.

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