Swimmers dive into banking

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Here we are at another Olympics. In a few weeks, we will have a new crop of medal-winning Australian athletes, who will then scoop up lucrative corporate sponsorship deals.

And if history is any precedent, some of the class of 2016 will end up working in the private banking divisions of our big four banks, helping them do business with high-net-worth ­clients.

Two-time Olympic gold medallist Grant Hackett. Picture: Sarah Reed.

Two-time Olympic gold medallist Kieren Perkins, for example, is now the general manager of private client experience over at Andrew Thorburn’s NAB. The swimming legend has been with the bank since 2009 and was promoted again in March — enough time to settle into his new role before the Rio Games.

Fellow two-time Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer Grant Hackett — the man who beat Perkins in the 1500m at the 2000 Games — also beat Perkins into the big four.

He joined Westpac as a private banker in 2008.

According to Hackett’s LinkedIn profile, he continues to work for Brian Hartzer’s Westpac, now as its head of priority markets.

But in the real world, the bank’s relationship with Hackett — who made headlines in April after a controversial encounter with a male passenger on a Virgin Australia flight — ended about 18 months ago, not long after his towel incident at James Packer’s Crown Melbourne.

Might be time for a LinkedIn update.

Rewriting history

Next April Westpac turns 200.

You might remember at a lunch to mark the bank’s 199-year anniversary, Malcolm Turnbull used his keynote address to pour the bucket on the industry. And, as we’ve seen this week, the mud keeps coming.

Westpac boss Brian Hartzer with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Renee Nowytarger/The Australian.

So won’t it be interesting to see what mention that lunching episode gets in the history of the bank, which is being prepared to mark the occasion?

Chief executive Brian Hart­zer — who majored in history at Ivy League uni Princeton, and is no stranger to Westpac’s enormous archive at Lane Cove, on Sydney’s north shore — is closely involved in the project.

Danny John was its editor-in-chief until he left the bank in February for finance upstart SocietyOne, where he’s since been joined by former Westpac exec Jason Yetton. John got the thing until 1982 before handing over to corporate affairs chief Carolyn McCann’s capable team.

Now we hear the manuscript is almost completed. The boss, and others, are making edits. Both Hartzer and his chair Lindsay Maxsted are writing something to go up the front of it. But it’s the last chapter on the bank’s most recent year that we’re most interested in.

Shades of grey

Now to “Project Carpet” at Charles Goode and Tony Burgess’s boutique advisory Flagstaff Partners.

Former ANZ chairman Charles Goode with former prime minister John Howard and the People’s Bank of China’s Dai Xianglong, opening the bank’s Beijing office in 1997.

It’s the latest addition to the firm’s busy 2016 — along with a mandate on the sale of the online broking business of the bank Goode used to chair, ANZ, and Burgess’s legal case against his former client, detention centre operator Broadspectrum over almost $4 million in fees.

This week “Project Carpet” has taken up at least as much time as those two endeavours at Flagstaff’s HQ, which sits in Melbourne’s tower of power, 101 Collins Street.

It is the result of one of the key rules of the prestigious building: occupants must replace their carpet every seven years. Or leave.

To this end, Goode’s various objets d’art — his ornate table and chairs, etc — have been relocated. The well-connected banker’s much-loved Persian rug, which has earned praise from visiting prime ministers and treasurers, has also been temporarily replaced by a much more utilitarian thread.

Order will soon be restored to the Goode kingdom. The new carpet is now in place. Replacing the old stuff, which was a funereal shade of grey, is a lovely new thread, woven in … a funereal shade of grey. Clearly knows what he likes.

Twitter impostor

If the courts give him the all clear — no certain thing — bank-hater Rod Culleton will be One Nation’s WA senator.

Rod Culleton is confident of taking a Senate seat for One Nation. Picture: Colin Murty/The Australian.

For now, Culleton is confident he will take his seat and join Pauline Hanson and One Nation’s other two elected senators in the red house in Canberra.

In the meantime, he’s already had a parody Twitter account set up in his honour — one that has got some of his nemeses in the banking world confused already. Culleton told us yesterday evening the account had nothing to do with him. “It wasn’t me,” he said.

There were some clues in who the account @SenatorRod was following. Along with people in politics and media, it had two other main camps: cute animals and nubile women. But as we said, we’ve been told it’s nothing to do with Culleton.

For a digital window into his soul, we’ll have to wait.

Packer’s old mate

The headlines this week were firmly focused on Noni B’s doubling in size through the $75m purchase of the Pretty Girl fashion chain from James Packer.

Billionaire James Packer has quietly reunited with an old friend. Picture: Scott Barbour/Getty Images.

Missed in the coverage was that the billionaire has quietly reunited with an old friend as part of the deal.

A group called Centennial Funds Management has held a 13 per cent stake in Noni B since it blocked a move by the retailer’s biggest shareholder Alceon to take the company private a couple of years back.

Centennial, which counts former star Wilsons fund manager Matthew Kidman as its key stock picker, was seeded last year by a $10m equity hedge fund called Level 18, which is run by former Packer lieutenant Glenn Poswell. Poswell is the former CEO of Packer’s Ellerston Capital business, which these days is run by another former Packer executive, Ashok Jacob.

Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings retains a passive 25 per cent stake in the funds management group.

Level 18 was also named after the floor on which the Victor Smorgon family office operates out of in an office tower in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra.

Level 18 was seeded by the Victor Smorgon Group.

Now Packer and Poswell will be reunited as shareholders in Noni B after its purchase of Pretty Girl included a share placement to CPH.