Who’s who in royal commission zoo?

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Three mysteries swirled among the lawyers, bankers, spinners and journalists gathered for Kenneth Hayne’s royal commission opening address. Margin Call can now answer one-and-a-half of them.

As noted in yesterday’s column, one of the country’s most distinguished barristers, Peter Jopling QC, was along on Monday, and in a prime position, sitting in the front row of the gallery.

Peter Jopling QC

The formidable barrister’s client was a mystery.

Until now.

Margin Call can reveal Jopling — a competition specialist who acted for the ACCC in the regulator’s successful case against Visy Industry Holdings — is working for Brian Hartzer’s Westpac, alongside fellow silks Matthew Darke SC and John Sheahan QC.

Quite a team.

Now to the half-answer.

Earlier in the year, Hayne appointed silks Rowena Orr QC and Michael Borsky SC, along with Mark Costello and Eloise Dias as counsel assisting the commissioner.

Michael Borsky, barrister

Hayne could certainly use the help as he heroically works towards the February 2019 deadline set by the Turnbull government.

Orr, Costello and Dias were all along for Monday’s opening at Melbourne’s Fair Work Commission building. But there was no Borsky. How come?

Margin Call has been told a personal matter has got in the way of Borsky’s royal commission duties. And we’re told it is unclear whether Borsky will return.

With the efficient Hayne running the show, expect a definitive answer soon.

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne

And now to the unsolved mystery.

Speculation is rife among the royal commission’s various legal picnickers about who will help out Hayne and his assistants as they toil away on their voluminous piles of legal documents.

Christian Porter’s Australian Government Solicitor is the principal source of legal grunt helping out Hayne. But experienced onlookers believe AGS will need to engage further financial services legal power for this ambitiously timetabled assignment.

Last week a rumour circulated that the Labor-aligned firm Maurice Blackburn (Bill Shorten’s one-time employer) had been engaged. While that would have been fun, the firm and commission told us it’s not true.

No word yet on who has got the work. If you know more, we’re all ears.

McGrath afar

Like those wind-maligned snowboarders on the perilous slopes of Pyeongchang, shares in listed real estate outfit McGrath just keep tumbling.

Yesterday shares in the outfit founded by “Mr Property” John McGrath slippedanother 4.7 per cent to close at a new low of 40c. Now valued below $60 million, it’s what the real estate agents call a fixer-upper.

There was no news to proceed the fall, just an ongoing vacuum of information.

Shareholders still have no idea who, if anybody, the 54-year-old executive director McGrath has convinced to join him on a board that, as of close of business Monday, will lose its chairman Cass O’Connor and her fellow non-executive directors Elizabeth Crouch and Cath Rogers.

Nor do shareholders know when departing CEO Cameron Judson will leave.

And many are stunned to hear that the beleaguered company has indicated that its Thursday result will be delivered by the departing Judson, not the Walsh Bay-residing McGrath, who according to an ASX release on January 22 is to take over as interim executive chairman at a still to be announced date. That seems a bizarre decision by its founder, 26 per cent shareholder and Tony Robbins tragic. Will McGrath change his mind?

Difficult diagnosis

The Andrew Demetriou-chaired Capitol Health board is plotting its next move in the takeover battle for the Helen Kurincic-chaired, ASX-listed peer Integral Diagnostics.

Capitol is expected to give its half-year results on February 28, although nothing is set in stone.

Depending on the feedback from Integral’s shareholders, don’t rule out something earlier.

Around Demetriou’s Rothschild-advised board table is departing News Corp executive Nicole Sheffield, who as of April will be able to focus even more of her time on the transaction.

Meanwhile, over at the Credit-Suisse-and-Michael-Stock-advised Integral, its managing director Dr Ian Kadish continues to take his surgeon’s scalpel to management.

On Friday, Kadish’s chief operating officer Greg Hughes suddenly became Kadish’s former chief operating officer. Chop, chop.

Short and sweet

It’s a measure of how bleak life has become for Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce that a cartoon about his citizenship crisis looks like a postcard from a gentler age.

Joyce has just disclosed the gifted framed toon by The Fin’s wonderful David Rowe. It features the imperilled Nationals leader and his fellow citizenship-challenged Canberra colleagues on Rowe’s reinterpretation of Australia’s coat of arms.

According to the form, the gift (valued at $621.25) was from “Mr John Short, Brisbane QLD 4068”.

For those readers without the White Pages at hand, that is John Short the lobbyist at National Party president Larry Anthony’s shop SAS Group.

Margin Call understands that the gifting of framed political cartoons is something of a Short calling card. Bill Shorten was another recipient back in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era.

In other Joyce news, Cormac Barry’s bookmaker Sportsbet is no longer taking lightly-taxed online bets on the name of the Deputy Prime Minister’s unborn child.