Sydney Opera House boss Louise Herron weighs up legal options

Illustration: Rod Clement

Margin Call hears Sydney Opera House boss Louise Herron met with her lawyers after Fairfax broadcaster Alan Jones’s ­ferocious follow-up attack on his breakfast show yesterday ­morning.

As the wealthy Wagner family demonstrated last month, there’s serious money to be made in suing the broadcaster for defamation.

Will Herron go through with it?

Fairfax shareholders — still smarting from the $3.75 million awarded to the Wagners — might hope not.

Herron couldn’t be reached for comment last night.

But at least Jones offered an on-air apology today for his treatment of Herron.

For its part, the Nicholas Moore-chaired Sydney Opera House Trust has so far decided not to engage with Jones, who has attacked Herron for pushing back against the use of the country’s most famous building as a billboard to advertise this Saturday’s Everest horse race.

“Nick doesn’t want to engage with Alan Jones,” said a source familiar with the board’s thinking. “If you do, you give the prick more oxygen. Jones loves it.”

While they haven’t spoken out publicly, we understand Moore and his boardmates — which include actor Deborah Mailman and company director Jillian Segal — have been in close contact with Herron to let her know that they back her ­entirely.

Seems the least they can do.

Milne keeps busy

After a turbulent fortnight, it’s good to see Justin Milne keeping busy in his life after the ABC.

A fortnight ago, the then ABC chair Milne — a former business associate of Malcolm Turnbull back in his Ozemail days — was consumed with the sacking of former Aunty managing director Michelle Guthrie.

Now Milne, wearing his hat as chair of tax software business MYOB, is dealing with a $2.2 billion takeover proposal from Henry Kravis and George Roberts’ New York-headquartered private equity giant KKR.

Busy man.

The KKR bid arrived after the market closed on Friday. Once the market opened yesterday, stock in MYOB shot up almost 20 per cent on the news to close at $3.56, still a touch below the $3.70-a-share cash offer.

For now, there’s no sense that any other buyer is out there.

Investment bank UBS is advising Milne and his MYOB boardmates on the takeover.

In a useful bit of timing, on Saturday night Milne was the guest of UBS’s investment banking boss Aidan Allen at an intimate springtime fundraiser for the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

The dinner event was held at Sydney’s Government House, the Opera House-neighbouring home of Brandenburg patron and NSW Governor David Hurley.

Not a bad Harbour view-fronting spot to digest the Americans’ $2.2bn offer, which was lodged earlier that day.

David Lang is the KKR local operative leading the bid. The private equiteers are being advised by Macquarie’s Jeremy Tasker and some other minions from Nicholas Moore’s Millionaires’ Factory.

Macquarie was also well represented at Saturday’s Brandenburg dinner.

That’s to be expected. The investment bank is the principal partner of the orchestra.

Although Margin Call understands none of Macquarie’s MYOB team were along. Guess they had a bit on.

Late email

It’s the $2.2bn question: could former ABC chair Justin Milne’s email account strike again?

To be clear, Margin Call understands a loose email from MYOB chair Milne to his chief executive Tim Reed is on the less likely end of the spectrum of possible risks to the KKR takeover proposal.

But when you are working on multi-billion-dollar transactions, all possibilities have to be canvassed — especially when one of the key players is Milne, this side of the Michelle Guthrie implosion.

A more credible threat to the $2.2bn deal is that KKR rethinks its $3.70-a-share cash offer on the other side of due diligence, should it be granted by Milne and his fellow MYOB boardmates.

Slurpee fund

Wannabe Member for Wentworth Dave Sharma is not the only one signing up to chair Israeli-headquartered ASX wannabes.

Margin Call sees Rod Walker — once the chairman of ASX disaster Godfreys, and in recent years an unhappy vacuum cleaner retailer — is the proposed chair of Nice-Vend, an Israeli incorporated company that is seeking to join Dominic Stevens’ local exchange.

Nice-Vend, which with its “quinzee” machines makes a kind of next-generation slurpee, is attempting to raise up to $7.5 million.

The initial public offering hasn’t quite gone to schedule.

Nice-Vend’s shares were scheduled to hit the ASX a week ago. Last night, Walker was in conversation with his boardmates in Israel about the float’s future.

According to the prospectus, the former Godfreys man would receive $100,000 to be the Israeli-based company’s chair.

That would be a useful addition to the portfolio of directors he has assembled in his life after flogging vacuum cleaners.

Also with plenty of interest in the float’s success is Melbourne’s Kentgrove Capital, which will get a broker fee of up to $225,000 on the money raised, along with another $540,540 as an advisory fee and options equivalent to up to 10 per cent of the number of shares issued under the public offer.

Plenty of reason to hope the frozen drink maker’s Israeli backers are still keen to go ahead with it.