Venues for budget drinks still TBC; Matt Comyn’s plant-based boost

Drinks with Reid MP Sally Sitou are on offer for the miserly end of corporate Australia at $500. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Anthony Albanese’s ban on fundraising in federal parliament appears certain to leave its marble halls and terraces vacant on budget evening a fortnight hence.

Still unclear is where the regulation dinner and stilted libations will be offered given the building has been newly dubbed out of bounds – not that Albo’s injunction is dissuading anyone, on any side of politics, from supplicating before the nation’s business leaders.

Drinks with Reid MP Sally Sitou are on offer for the miserly end of corporate Australia at $500. The invitation boasts that attendees will be able to rub shoulders with backbenchers, assistant ministers and “hear their views on the federal budget”.

We can’t think of a better and more expensive way of inducing a deep REM. A seat at the traditional dinner, MC’d by senator Jenny McAllister, starts at $1400 (Sitou drinks included) while a whole table (with a free cabinet minister thrown in) costs $16,000. That beats the $14,000 charged by the Liberal Party in April but, then again, inflation has bitten us all hard in the months since.

As to where these functions will be held – that’s TBC, with ­attendees to be notified of a ­location in the coming days. Guests have also been encouraged not to stack the numbers with too many men, either. “We encourage equal representation when nominating your event guests,” the invitation said.

Let’s face it, no one’s going to complain if the room is full of women. Meanwhile, the Liberals and Nationals appear to have dumped their plans for a joint budget-reply feast in the Great Hall of parliament on October 27.

Invitations dispatched in September said the event would be held in parliament – $1500 a ticket – but that has also been scratched on account of Albo’s ukase on fundraising.

So where to now, in that case? A Liberal spokesman couldn’t confirm the latest location.

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Tiffany moves

Some polishing up, it seems, of the local management at ­jewellery house Tiffany & Co.

Margin Call has learned that vice-president and managing director Glen Schlehuber has made a quiet departure from the business after almost three decades of service.

Glen Schlehuber. Picture: Nick Cubbin

What started for Schlehuber in the early 1990s, when he joined the company as an accounting intern, appears to have ended in August with his removal as its secretary for Oceania. A month later he was also removed as one of its directors. Schlehuber did not respond to requests for comment.

It seems his replacement on the board is finance and accounting director Paul Garrett, an appointee borrowed from the Sydney offices of Moet Hennessy, also owned by LVMH.

Schlehuber is not the only one to have vanished, it seems. Sophie Firmager, Tiffany’s director of people and culture, is also understood to have departed, with Matt Boyle appointed human resources director last month.

We can’t help but wonder if these rather substantial changes have anything to do with the appointment of Anthony Ledru as global president and chief executive of Tiffany in January 2021. A Tiffany spokeswoman declined to comment.

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Wave of goodbyes

Meanwhile, it’s hard to miss the titanic wave of executive resignations occurring over at Insurance and Care NSW – better known as icare – which has surfed from one rolling crisis to another in recent years.

Staff were emailed by CEO Richard Harding on Wednesday and told of two group executives who had resigned to take up, yes, new and exciting opportunities. Rashi Bansal, who oversaw icare’s Home Building Compensation Fund, is off to Avant Insurance, while Caroline Rockett, the agency’s digital lead, finishes in a few weeks. No word yet on what her latest opportunity entails.

Nevermind that icare was issued a letter of censure by the regulator a week ago after the agency “inadvertently emailed 1450 cost of claims reports” to about 570 incorrect recipients, disclosing personal and health information “of around 192,000 injured workers”.

We note, too, how the regulator announced a broad-ranging review of icare’s home building compensation scheme to be carried out by McGrathNicol. That was last month.

Bansal and Rockett are only the latest out the door at the agency, with icare losing Jane McGovern, its GE for risk and governance, several weeks ago, and its general counsel, Hugh McGonagle, who finished in July. He was followed by deputy general counsel Aditi Kogekar, who exited in August.

Harding, of course, would be right to sell these departures with as much topspin as possible to the rest of the ailing team. Fresh starts for a talented bunch, of course.

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Comyn’s meaty boost

Commonwealth Bank boss Matt Comyn is “fundamentally optimistic” about the prospects for the economy, despite cost of living pressures and global uncertainty. He’s also apparently quite optimistic about plant-based meat.

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Luis Ascui

Comyn has once again backed serial entrepreneur Jan Pacas to invest in his All G Foods, maker of next-gen burger patties. Comyn holds 227,704 shares in All G Foods after doubling his stake with a $100,000 injection of funds.

It appears he’s in good company on the shareholders register, alongside W23, the venture capital arm of supermarket giant Woolworths.

Other investors include the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Ashok Jacobs’ Ellerston Capital, Singapore-based private equity firm Triple Star Capital, Our Innovation Fund founders David Shein and Geoff Levi, Monash Capital, and Andrews Meats CEO Peter Andrews.