Who’ll lead the pack at ASIC watchdog?

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Australian Securities & Investments Commission chairman Greg Medcraft was pretty clear that the next head of the corporate cop should be one of his current team. But what does the Turnbull government think?

ASIC’s John Price.

Medcraft was speaking yesterday at the ASIC’s annual forum, during a session called “Meet the Commission”. Joining him were ASIC deputy chair Peter Kell, and the two commissioners considered most likely to replace their boss: John Price (who recently oversaw ASIC’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras float) and Cathie Armour (who joined ASIC in 2013 from Nicholas Moore’s Macquarie Group).

The outgoing chairman — known to many as a devotee of Chinese doctor Shuquan Liu’s wonder tea — was asked who should be the next chair by Sky Business host Ticky Fullerton.

“One of these three,” Medcraft answered.

ASIC’s Cathie Armour.

But, of course, it’s not the former Societe Generale banker’s decision.

Secretary John Fraser’s Treasury department is overseeing an “international” search process. Assisting is executive headhunter Heidrick & Struggles, which in November was awarded $250,000 to add more than existing commissioners to the shortlist.

The government wants options beyond Team Medcraft.

That shouldn’t surprise readers of the far-from-glowing capability review of ASIC, which was commissioned back in the Abbott-era, led by Productivity Commission chair Karen Chester and released last April.

Price at least has had his term as a commissioner extended through to March 2018.

Armour, on the other hand, has had to reapply for her current job — before she even gets to her boss’s.

Armour’s four-year term expires at the start of June.

It can’t be long now until the eight-months pregnant Minister for Revenue and Financial Services Kelly O’Dwyer puts her out of her misery.

Gail Kelly

No holy grail for Gail

She was a veritable Cleopatra at Westpac, but it would be best not to bet the house on Gail Kelly’s coronation as the chairwoman of BHP.

Despite the high regard in which Kelly is held by friends, colleagues and the London financial press, we gather that elevation ain’t happening.

The reports were hardly knocked over by the Big Australian — perhaps because the mooted consideration of a high-profile female former CEO was a good look for a global miner that has recently talked up its gender-equity ambitions.

Even without Kelly, a Westpac takeover of outgoing chairman Jac “The Knife” Nasser’s BHP board is possible.

Lindsay Maxsted

Independent director Carolyn Hewson — who, as it happens, was on the Westpac board that in 2007 appointed Gail as the first female boss of a big four bank — would be the favourite, if only she would put her hand up.

Current Westpac chair Lindsay Maxsted is highly rated by his BHP boardmates.

But, understandably, they seem to be of the view that you can’t chair the Big Australian and a big four bank at the same time. Maxsted has chaired Westpac for six-and-a-half years and has put the bank in the capable hands of a chief executive he selected, Brian Hartzer.

An offer would surely focus attention on Maxsted’s Westpac board succession planning — if required.

Incredibly, there are some internal candidates to replace Nasser who are not part of the Westpac family: former Amcor boss Ken MacKenzie and Malcolm Broomhead, the chairman of Orica, the explosives outfit that functions as something of a safety house for former Big Australians.

Insurance claims

You may have seen the Insurance Council of Australia, the general insurance peak industry association, has appointed a new president — just over a month after Colin Fagen’s four-and-a-bit-week reign came to an abrupt end.

Anthony Day, the insurance boss at Michael Cameron’s Suncorp, has taken over the role that was vacated by Fagen, after Fagen’s former friend and colleague John Neal dismissed him from QBE.

Fagen — who until February was QBE’s chief operating officer and was considered to be a possible replacement to Neal — has since engaged Harmers Workplace Lawyers, who specialise in sexy corporate cases. More interesting than Day’s appointment is his new Insurance Council board member Patrick Regan, QBE’s chief financial officer and, concurrently, head of Australian and New Zealand operations.

Patrick Regan

After Fagen’s ungainly end, the ambitious Regan is considered the internal candidate most likely to get the nod from QBE’s US-based chairman Marty Becker to replace the red-faced Neal.

Seems the odds have shortened further for the busy man.

Peter Costello

Gender balance

Nine Entertainment chairman Peter Costello appointed former Deloitte partner Samantha Lewis to the media company’s board yesterday.

But then Margin Call readers — clever people! — knew that on Saturday.

The appointment of Lewis — who also sits on the board of Tim Poole’s train company Aurizon — still leaves at least one board vacancy for Costello to fill following the low-key mid-January resignations of Nine ­directors Holly Kramer and ­Elizabeth Gaines.

Costello’s is now the most gender-equitable of the commercial television boards.

David Gordon’s now five-person Ten Network board has one female director, Debbie Goodin, as does Kerry Stokes’ nine-person Seven West Media board — although, better leave that outfit alone lest we provoke another tantrum from Seven’s Perth-based spokesperson Ben Harvey.

Sky’s the limit

Former Labor streetfighter Stephen Conroy has been appointed a political contributor to Angelos Frangopoulos’ Sky News. Anything is possible!

It’s not that long ago — less than six years — that Conroy, as Julia Gillard’s red underpants-enforcing communications minister, interfered in a tender process to make sure a $230 million Australia Network contract was awarded to the ABC instead of Sky News.

Stephen Conroy

But that’s another era. Conroy’s days as communications minister are in the distant past.

Now he’s gainfully employed as the chief executive of Responsible Wagering Australia, a group that lobbies on behalf of James Packer’s CrownBet and other online gambling websites.

Before he resigned as a Labor senator in an idiosyncratic manner last September, Conroy made well known in the partyroom his opposition to the Turnbull government’s plans to change the country’s archaic media ownership laws.

Interestingly, there have been reports suggesting a link between anti-gambling senator Nick Xenophon and the passage of Communications Minister Mitch Fifield’s media reforms.

What will the tangled Conroy make of all that? Tune into Sky to find out.