Wheeling and dealing the Prime objective

The Prime objective

Watch out Peter Costello and the Future Fund, there could be a new mandate in town after Malcolm Turnbull last night become Australia’s richest ever prime minister.

Turnbull and wife Lucy’s wealth, guesstimated at $200 million, doesn’t just come from land including their Point Piper mansion, pastoral holdings, a Canberra apartment and Potts Point commercial property.

And don’t forget the New York spread: two apartments on the 19th floor of the Art Deco Century Condominium overlooking Central Park, which it appears Lucy bought for about $US3m in 2013.

His parliamentary disclosures show former investment banker Malcolm is still very much a market player, buying and selling exotic investment funds.

For example, in June last year he bought into two vehicles in tax haven the Cayman Islands run by MSD Capital, a funds manager set up to look after the family fortune of Dell founder Michael Dell.

But in March this year he dumped one, MSD Energy Partners, but kept his stake in the other, MSD Torchlight Partners.

He’s also held on to bonds issued by the State Bank of India.

Of course, the bets don’t always work out. Sadly, he is an investor in notes issued by Phil Green’s failed Babcock & Brown.

Is Costello’s job safe after all?

No more TLC for MLC

Melbourne University Press boss Louise Adler is the new head of Arts Minister George Brandis’s Book Council of Australia — and flat out fighting with the ABC — so something had to give.

That “something” is the chairmanship of elite Melbourne school Methodist Ladies College, which she’s held for the past five years, during which MLC sacked principal Rosa “Stozza” Storelli amid a pay stoush.

With Toorak mums up in arms, MLC overhauled its rules to allow more outside input.

As a result, Adler’s position and four director slots are up for grabs at a meeting in November.

The school is also looking to fill another six “member” positions, which will elect the board in the future.

Big names on the board include PwC boss Tony Peake and Hawthorn FC president Andrew Newbold.

Adler won’t be among them for much longer, telling Margin Call: “I’m retiring — I’ve done my five years.” But her influence will live on at MLC for a little while yet. Her last job is as a member of a committee vetting applicants for the new gigs.

Going to the Gulf

Macquarie’s head banking analyst Michael Wiblin has scarpered from the silver donut and is set to jet to the Gulf for a new gig at sovereign wealth fund the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Wiblin, who left MacBank last month, will find at least one familiar face waiting when he touches down in the desert kingdom: fellow millionaire’s factory alumnus Guy Lambert, who was in the corporate finance team until he became ADIA infrastructure boss in 2008.

ADIA’s focus on Australia also includes a 13 per cent stake in takeover target Oil Search worth $US1bn — the third biggest stake in its equity portfolio.

Big picture guy

Forget social media snappers like Roxy Jacenko or Francesca Packer: former Bandido Toby Mitchell’s Instagram feed is the best show in town.

It’s a constant stream of luxury watches, expensive clothes and tattoos — Mitchell owns Melbourne parlour City of Ink — plus former Richmond footballer Jake “Push Up” King.

And while a post over the weekend apparently admitting to bashing a “weak dog cyclist” has grabbed all the headlines, Margin Call’s fave snap is a Father’s Day one of Mitchell and his dad, with fearful looking (and knobbly-kneed) Nine personality Sam Newman sandwiched in-between.

While running into Newman appears to have been a coincidence, there is a connection. Mitchell runs a business buying and selling watches and luxury cars through company TGM Consultants.

His co-director is plumber Michael Hamill. He’s the bloke who broke Newman’s nose back in 1997 in a dispute over Toorak socialite Melissa Skirton, for which he did four months inside.

As for Mitchell’s City of Ink, he told Margin Call it’s doing much better now since he was let out of jail in July after seven months remand, charged with threatening to kill.

Sadly for prosecutors, they were forced to drop most of the charges because the allegations were made up by a man with a history of making false reports to cops.

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