Wal King back holding court in his old digs

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Former Leighton boss Wal King has made a return appearance at the Sydney offices of the company he left back in 2010 — but what he’s doing there is a closely held secret.

Perhaps he was applying his years of wisdom to helping Leighton, now CIMIC, sort through some of the problems that have sprung up since he left.

At about $34, CIMIC’s share price is the best it’s been since King’s rule, but in a Morgan Stanley report in December analysts Nicholas Robison and Vivienne Lee put a target of just $13.10 on the stock after laying out a raft of potential pitfalls.

Among them: unresolved probes by Greg Medcraft’s ASIC (over alleged cost blowouts at the giant Gorgon gas project) and Federal Police (over accusations Leighton paid bribes to Iraqis) plus questions about cash flow and the company’s $1 billion accounts receivable book.

The analysts describe CIMIC’s profit drivers as “questionable”, reckon debt between financial reports could be $1bn higher than the reports and think that Habtoor Leighton Group, its JV with Emirati billionaire Khalaf al Habtoor, is having trouble paying back $600 million it owes Leighton.

Plenty there for King to sink his teeth into. Of course, any such work would fall outside the terms of a three-year, $6m consultancy agreement signed as part of his $24m golden handshake, as it expired in 2014.

Or he could just be there to water the pot plants.

Demonstrating CIMIC’s commitment to transparency, a spokeswoman declined to comment.

Smith nears sale

Former ANZ boss Mike Smith looks close to selling his $15m Toorak mansion, with agent Ross Savas of Kay & Burton hunkered down in discussions with a potential buyer.

Expressions of interest on the five-bed spread, which boasts pool, tennis court and “reflection pond”, closed last week.

The globe-trotting banker is happily serving out his gardening leave at his coastal Spray Farm estate on the Mornington Peninsula, far far away from the Ambank and OnePath disasters now occupying the days of his replacement, Shayne Elliott.

Look for Smith to pop up on a couple of blue-chip boards once his non-compete expires in July. His first gig will be as an adviser to ANZ on international affairs, trousering $250,000 a year — so perhaps he will be dealing with Ambank, the scandal-ridden Malaysian bank quarter-owned by ANZ, after all.

Pressure is on

It’s not just bankers at ANZ feeling the pressure, according to soon-to-retire Dow boss Andrew Liveris.

Liveris popped up yesterday for a yak to all comers at the University of Technology Sydney business school’s new Frank Gehry-designed Dr Chau Chak Wing Building — named for the property developer best known for his mega-donations to both sides of politics.

The Wing wing, which looks like a crumpled paper bag, was funded by $20m from Wing, so clearly UTS has no fear of a US corruption investigation in which the Chinese billionaire has been named (he denies doing anything wrong).

“To me, the building looks almost as though it is folding in on itself ... collapsing under enormous pressure,” Liveris told a crowd including his chairman Tom Harley, former NSW premier Nick Greiner’s son Justin and Luca Belgiorno-Nettis (of Transfield fame).

“I wonder if it is meant to be an abstract portrait of the modern business school student.”

Liveris, a big fan of PM Malcolm Turnbull’s innovation agenda, is expected to spend a lot more time in Australia when he steps down in about 18 months as part of Dow’s merger with rival Dupont.

He said he had spent his life trying to avoid going to Dow’s head office in frosty Michigan, describing himself as a “boy from Darwin who ended up in the Tundra”.

Change of mind

Never say never seems to be new Medibank boss Craig Drummond’s motto. The former NAB finance and strategy boss took the gig atop the privatised health insurer yesterday despite apparently ruling it out at last contact earlier this month.

As speculation swirled that he might take the Medibank position, the former Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and JBWere hand instead appeared to be mulling a return to his old investment banking stomping ground. “I’m looking at a range of opportunities, but they’re more aligned to my previous industries,” he said at the time.

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