Trouble with Harry Triguboff of Meriton

Illustration: Peter Nicholson.

The normally cheery and open staff at apartment giant Meriton were uncharacteristically shy on the subject.

But it seems that trouble has struck the company’s billionaire founder, Harry Triguboff.

We understand the 83-year-old Triguboff has busted his foot. We gather he’s been out of Meriton HQ — which sits modestly on Sydney’s Kent Street — since at least late last week.

It’s terrible news. And all while Triguboff (worth $10.2 billion and rising) is in the running to be crowned Australia’s richest person tomorrow. How fortune’s wheel turns.

Meriton is, as has been the way for a few years now, between media contacts at the moment. The details of the incident remain sketchy. But reception was able to tell us that the boss is on the mend and expected to return to the office this afternoon.

Whether Triguboff arrives wearing a moonboot or sitting on a wheelchair pushed by his trusted lieutenant Will Miranda, we’ll have to wait and see.

Drummond poaching

NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn better watch his back. It looks like the internal rival he beat to the top job, Craig Drummond, is picking off his talent.

Drummond, NAB’s former CFO who takes charge of Medibank Private in July, has nabbed his first NAB executive. The Melbourne-headquartered bank’s chief spinner Meaghan Telford is off to the health insurer, where she will report straight to the boss.

Telford worked closely with Drummond on the British asset sales program and has been NAB’s mouthpiece for the past six years. She leaves only months after the departure of the bank’s former head of corporate affairs Paula Benson.

It’s a loss of corporate memory that group exec Michaela Healy (to whom Telford reported) will now have to fill.

Benson, who is married to senator Stephen Conroy (the factional nemesis of, among others, negative gearing enthusiast David Feeney), recently snared a gig on the board of the ­Victorian Funds Management Corporation. Bless that Dan Andrews.

Long bow

For a third day debate raged about the new hire at Shayne Elliott’s ANZ, incoming CFO Michelle Jablko.

ANZ’s head of corporate communications Paul Edwards took to Twitter to ask whether the criticism of Jablko’s appointment by Bell Potter broker Angus Aitken (which we published at length in yesterday’s column) was sexist.

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

We certainly missed that angle. It seemed to us that Aitken was criticising Jablko’s pedigree as an investment banker, first at UBS then at Greenhill.

In our reading his thesis was all there in the opening sentence: “Former investment bankers tend to be crap at most things in the listed world.”

Edwards’ sexism line seemed a bit of a stretch. However, after ANZ’s recent troubles with employees in strip clubs and cocaine-laced birthday cakes, perhaps we should forgive a certain jumpiness.

Aitken, the poor bastard, wrote again to clients yesterday: “Apologies for my rant yesterday, was over the top. I am sure the new CFO will do a good job.”

In his defence, we’d point out that Aitken is married to a former Goldman Sachs banker — but, really, what does that matter? It seems this debate is much more about truthiness.

Donation no joke

South Australian senator Nick Xenophon’s benefactor, Optical Superstore’s Ian Melrose, clearly has a sense of humour.

The Melbourne millionaire businessman was in Adelaide yesterday working on a series of television commercials that will hit our screens next week.

From an edit suite in Xenophon’s City of Churches, Melrose — who gave $100,000 to Xenophon in the past financial year plus $15,000 from his wife Margaret — told us the political ads would have us “chuckling in our seat” as a bit of light relief amid the election campaign.

But the ads are not about Xenophon. Intriguing.

Melrose, who is co-director of a company — Actara Pty Ltd — with former ACT attorney-general and barrister Bernard Collaery, didn’t seem fazed by all the fuss around his and his wife’s donations to the senator.

Melrose and Collaery share a passion for the rights of East Timor, which Xenophon understands. The senator has recently called for no less than a royal commission over allegations that the Australian government bugged Timor’s cabinet deliberations.

Collaery is representing Timor in its action in the The Hague over Australia’s conduct and the whistleblower who exposed the whole affair.

Melrose says he’s used to people laughing at him.

“Nick laughs at my jokes and just pats me on the head,” Melrose said.

Guess that’s what you get for $115,000.

Chip off the old blocks

Now that Nick Xenophon has taken his political aspirations national, he’s popping up all over the place.

Yesterday he was in Melbourne. Last month he was in gorgeous Wollongong where he spoke at a rally outside the Port Kembla steelworks and was part of a Senate inquiry into the future of Aussie steel.

As it happens, Wollongong is a regional centre that Bernard Collaery and Ian Melrose know well. Much of the work of the property developer Actara, on which they are directors, is based there.

Over the years Actara has bought and sold a range of properties that form part of Panorama Estate at Lake Heights. The company still controls five blocks there, each of which are keeping the local council busy. Four of the residential blocks lie dormant while Actara seeks a change in local zoning, while a fifth much larger block has an application in with council to build 17 townhouses.

Seeing red on Greens

Well look at that: Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger has picked up a spot in a new Labor advertising campaign in Melbourne. Congratulations!

Kroger, you’ll remember, has been out and about making the case for the Coalition to preference the Greens in key Labor seats in Victoria. Some in the expansive orbit of Liberal federal director Tony Nutt have been unhappy with his advocacy. They argue it jars with the Coalition’s national scare campaign about a Labor-Greens government.

But others think it’s brilliant. Labor Member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby, for example, is a big fan. So much so that he’s enlisted the Liberal president in his campaign against his 30-year-old Greens rival, Stephanie Hodgins-May.

Danby has placed ads warning his constituents that “you can’t trust the Greens on Israel and the Liberals preferencing them”.

The ad, which takes up a half page of this week’s edition of The Australian Jewish News, features Kroger and his quote: “They (the Greens) are not the nutters they used to be.”

The Liberal president stars alongside Greens Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt, Scott Ludlum and Lee Rhiannon. What’s that phrase Nutt is always saying about the best political machine running quietly?

Hitting paydirt

The non-executive directors at Perth-based Pilbara Minerals will be keeping an eye on the Syrah Resources AGM in Melbourne today.

As noted yesterday, an institutional backlash forced the Tony Leibowitz-chaired Pilbara to drop a resolution to boost maximum annual non-executive director pay from $400,000 to $1 million.

For his sake, here’s hoping Syrah chairman Jim Askew fares better. He’s asking shareholders to boost the kitty to $1m, from $750,000. It’s for the same stated reason as Pilbara — to attract quality board members.

Syrah — which is in the graphite business — is about twice the size of the lithium-focused Pilbara.

And while the two will not butt heads directly in markets, they are both chasing investors who want exposure to the battery markets that AGL’s “Fast and Furious” chief Andy Vesey says will turn the energy world on its head.

Askew, a mining director of renown, added to the board’s quality this week with the appointment of Boston Power founder and battery authority and entrepreneur Christina Lampe-Onnerud. How about her luck? One week in and already in line for a payrise.

Won’t happen again

So turns out that it wasn’t Vin Diesel at that business lunch in Sydney that we reported on yesterday but it was AGL’s Vesey. Also Sir Rod Eddington (at the same lunch) joined the board of News Corp spin-off 21st Century Fox and these days is no longer with News Corp — it won’t happen again!