Transfield Services plays the name game

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Under-siege listed detention centre operator Transfield Services will today tell shareholders it wants to change its name to Broadspectrum following a demand from founding family the Belgiorno-Nettises that the company stop using the clan’s Transfield brand.

The proposed name will be put to shareholders at Transfield’s annual meeting, to be held on October 28 in Sydney at the historic Australian Mint building on Macquarie St.

Web addresses to suit were registered last week — including one ending in “sucks”, no doubt to deter activists.

Transfield’s beleaguered chairwoman Diane Smith-Gander will seek to reinvent the company’s branding amid intense pressure from activists lobbying institutional shareholders to ditch the company over its role running refugee camps on Manus Island and Nauru and alleged human rights abuses there.

Late last month, the federal government renewed Transfield’s lucrative multi-billion-dollar contract to run the centres for another five years.

As The Australian revealed yesterday, Smith-Gander — number 15 on the Women’s Weekly power list and a finalist on Westpac’s just-released similar list — was barred from the top job at Tourism Australia because former Treasurer Joe Hockey and his replacement, then-immigration minister Scott Morrison, feared a backlash over her gig at Transfield.

The company’s notice of meeting will today reveal the name change, which follows word in February from the Belgiorno-Nettis family’s private vehicle, Transfield Holdings, that they were withdrawing permission to use the moniker.

The two companies have almost identical logos, operate in similar industries and are often confused. The original logo was designed by co-founder Franco Belgiorno-Nettis.

His sons Luca and Guido Belgiorno-Nettis were directors of Transfield Services until 2012 and the family sold all its remaining 11 per cent stake in the company in September last year.

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis was forced to step down as chair of the Sydney Biennale last year after artists opposed to Transfield Services’ work at detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru lobbied the Biennale board.

Transfield Holdings already uses the Broadspectrum name to brand its electrical contracting services business.

Outsourcing jobs

Freshly minted leader Malcolm Turnbull is all about innovating and embracing the disruption driven by technology, so it’s great to see Andy Penn’s Telstra disrupting tech jobs all the way to India.

The telco has sent emissaries to India to train replacements for workers at Telstra Digital who design, build and maintain the telco’s mammoth website.

While according to the PM these are the kinds of gigs upon which Australia’s economic recovery is to be built, Penn apparently thinks they’re jobs better done elsewhere.

Telstra says between 10 and 15 people will be employed in India by a “new external supplier” and three contractors in Oz “have not had their contracts renewed in the past month for various reasons”, but Margin Call hears about 10 local contractors will be disrupted right out of a job.

Telstra also says none of Digital’s 400 permanent employees are affected, but troops who report to boss Gerd Schenkel are nervous.

Former boss David Thodey was a big fan of the dot.com dude.

But whispers are that Penn is not quite as keen, despite the Schenkmeister’s boast of “building a multichannel digital ecosystem for all customers and employees” and grandiose personal website.

Weekly, not weakly

The immediately out-of-date Australian Women’s Weekly power list hit the stands yesterday, with unemployed political staffer Peta Credlin up in lights at No 1.

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart will be disappointed to note she comes in at only number 17, behind Gretel Packer at number 8 courtesy of jointly running the $200 million National Philanthropic Fund, a joint venture between the listed Crown Resorts and her family’s private philanthropic fund.

The Weekly ranks Harvey Norman boss Katie Page, the wife of Gerry Harvey, at number 7 and has placed a six-page Harvey Norman ad spread at the end of the list’s leading lights.

New to the list is Siobhan McKenna, who runs Lachlan Murdoch’s private investment company Illyria, and a former chair of NBN Co, who comes in at number 37.

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