Three faces of Gretel Packer

Jon Kudelka toon for Margin Call

Now that Gretel Packer has established her wealth in her own right, the almost-billionaire is getting on with business.

Having settled with her brother James Packer (recently valued by BRW at $5 billion) over their late father Kerry Packer’s will at the end of last year, Gretel, who turns 50 at the end of August (and was recently valued at $739 million) has enlisted the help of PwC partner Glen Frost to assist in structuring her financial affairs.

Packer has established a new vehicle, Dakshina Pty Ltd, with the help of fellow director Frost, who specialises in tax advice for rich families and their private businesses.

Kerry’s daughter is the sole beneficial shareholder of the company, the name of which appears to be drawn from Hindu iconology.

Dakshini is one of the three faces of the deity of Agni, one of the most important Vedic gods and a representative of divine illumination. We don’t get it ­either.

Francesca and Gretel. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis.

House rules

Packer’s 21-year-old daughter Francesca Packer Barhamhad better get used to the Melbourne cold.

She’s busted up with boyfriend Kelli Holland, for whom she was going to move to the southern capital and get a job at Uncle James’s Crown.

The relationship might be over, but her southern property play remains. We can reveal she is now the owner of a $6.1m Victorian terrace, overlooking pretty Fawkner Park in fashionable South Yarra.

Francesca nabbed the real estate on Pasley Street when the couple’s love was still new. They split after their international jaunt over the Aussie summer.

Since then Chessie has mainly been offshore. This week she was in Vietnam getting acquainted with the less fortunate.

Perhaps waiting for trust funds to vest, mum Gretel appears to have helped out in buying the house. The South Yarra pad is registered to Westpac and Platinum Summit Pty Ltd — a vehicle that is half-owned by mother and daughter. It’s not clear to us how the three Vedic fires fit into the sale.

McInnes’ new digs

Moving from South Yarra to Toorak: it seems billionaire Solly Lew wasn’t kidding when he said Altona boy done good Mark McInnes needed ready cash to build a new house.

Last month Solly gave McInnes a big pay rise and said he was giving him permission to flog $12 million worth of shares to pay for a new house build.

We can reveal the reincarnated retail boss is now the proud owner of a prime slice of Toorak, just up the road from former ANZ boss Mike Smith’s up-for-sale place on Hopetoun Road.

While Smith waits for FIRB to tick off on his $15m sale, McInnes and his partner Lisa Kelly have settled on the $9.25m purchase.

It’s a long way from the bon vivant’s former Bondi playground and a further indication that the Premier boss plans to stick in the southern capital for a while.

McInnes doesn’t own any other real estate in Melbourne — he’s renting in nearby Malvern — so it looks like the Toorak estate is to be pushed over. McInnes’ boss has agreed to pay his rent for three years as his new erection is completed.

McInnes and Kelly already have a holiday pad on the Mornington Peninsula’s Sorrento (where the water is 15.6 degrees, compared with 19 degrees in Bondi), for which they paid $2.7m in 2013.

Watchdog’s week

Scott Morrison’s tough cop on the beat, Greg Medcraft, is on a strict dietary regime thanks to his diabetes. But he’d be tempted to swap the green tea for a glass of bubbles after a cracking week.

Following the conviction of Riverview mullet pioneer Oliver Curtis on Thursday, insider trader Michael Hull — who hails from ScoMo’s Sutherland shire — was yesterday sentenced to an effective 17 months’ jail for his crime.

His conviction related to stock tips he’d got from a buddy while the pair were jogging around Centennial Park. Court documents show that ASIC has alleged that Hull’s mate was former Credit Suisse vice-president Darren Thompson, who our lawyer has asked we point out hasn’t been charged with anything and who we aren’t saying did anything wrong.

Curtis and his family might note that Hull — just like Curtis’s best mate-turned-star-Crown-witness John Hartman — pleaded guilty to his crimes. As with Hartman (who served 15 months at Silverwater jail), Hull’s sentence reflected his contrition.

Meanwhile Curtis has for six years maintained his innocence and fought ASIC the whole way.

We will find out the wisdom of that approach on June 17 when Justice Lucy McCallum delivers Curtis’s sentence.

Spotless reputation

What was going on at the James McMurdo-led Deutsche Bank this week?

On Monday this column reported that the Deutsche analyst who covers the cleaning and catering outfit Spotless — Craig Wong-Pan — had been placed on a “restricted list”. That meant he was not allowed to cover the stock because of a concerns of a conflict of interest.

Presumably on the other side of the bank’s “Chinese Wall” — which separate the analyst and investment arms of integrated banks — Deutsche’s deal-makers were cooking up something related to the Margaret Jackson-chaired Spotless.

Well, whatever Deutsche’s investment bankers were cooking up, it was short-lived. By Wednesday Won-Pan was publishing on Spotless again.

That was after Spotless had announced it was looking at hawking its laundries business.

We still have no idea why those two things — the Won-Pan’s restriction and his post-laundry liberation — are related.

Meanwhile, Greg Medcraft’s tough cop on the beat ASIC continues to pursue recent irregular share trades at Spotless. Seems the corporate regulator is as confused as we are on this one.

Sexism alive + well in stockbroking? @Bell_Potter Aitkin memo on #ANZ Michelle Jabko CFO appointment @cazzmelbourne pic.twitter.com/NkAu75Ht1D

— Paul Edwards (@pgtedwards) May 25, 2016

The tweet that roared

Not since the Arab Spring has the role of Twitter been so ridiculously overblown as in the Aitken-ANZ-Bell fiasco. Consider the chronology.

It was late on Tuesday last week that ANZ boss Shayne Elliott called Colin Bell to express his extreme displeasure about the then Bell Potter employee Angus Aitken.

At 9.04am on that very Tuesday, Aitken — you may have read — had published a punchy note that criticised Michelle Jablko, who Elliott had revealed the previous day would be ANZ’s next chief financial officer.

At 8.27am on Wednesday — the day after the robust call from Elliott to Bell — Aitken published an apology for the day before’s “rant”.

And on Thursday morning — the day before Elliott honoured an old promise to visit Bell’s Melbourne office — the news broke that Aitken was no longer a Bell employee. Exactly when that decision was made still isn’t clear.

Slotted among all this — at 12.37pm on Wednesday, to be precise — was a much-discussed tweet by ANZ’s head of corporate communications Paul Edwards.

However ill-advised it was (and it was spectacularly ill-advised), it’s hard to believe that the tweet (even if it was “liked” by his boss) had much to do with Colin Bell’s decision to part with Aitken.

Frankly, we’d be surprised if the Bell founder can use his email account, let alone Twitter.

We called on Friday morning in another attempt to get Colin Bell to recount what happened. “I’m just heading into a meeting,” he said, before promptly hanging up on us.

His phone was still off 10 hours later when we went to press. Must have been one hell of a meeting.

Colin Bell in his Melbourne office. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian.