Will Vicars still picking up the tab for Oroton; NSW flooded with claims

Illustration: Rod Clement

It’s nigh on four years since billionaire Will Vicars forked out about $25m to pluck luxury goods maker Oroton out of voluntary administration.

Alas, it looks like the Caledonia chief investment officer is still effectively propping the loss-making retail operation up via a series of related-party loans that seem to be keeping the wolves from Oroton’s door.

The well-known handbag and apparel retailer, which is controlled by Vicars’ Manderrah Pty Ltd – of which he is sole director, company secretary and only shareholder – in the most recent year made a bottom-line loss of $1.237m. Revenue was up slightly in the year at $79.4m, from $68.1m, but the decline into the red followed a big spend on tech upgrades for the group.

Will Vicars. Picture: Hollie Adams

The company is now in the hands of new chief executive Jennifer Child, a former McKinsey consultant who joined towards the end of last year. Vicars has also shipped Caledonia’s Tom Forde onto the retailer’s board, with Forde joining Vicars late last year from John Wylie’s Tanarra Capital, where he was investment director and CEO of the philanthropic advisory.

But the doors are being kept open thanks to Vicars’ money, with the businessman also Oroton’s single largest secured lender via a related-party financing arrangement that has only recently been extended until mid-next year.

Vicars, through his Manderrah vehicle, has put in place a shareholder loan facility that is secured by a first mortgage over company assets. The loan, which is not interest-free, runs to a maximum of about $25m.

At the full year, this had been tapped by Oroton to the tune of about $10m, divided almost equally between current and non-current loans.

An entity called CJH Holdings Pty Ltd is also a secured party. This company is associated with Caroline Howard, who is the widow of Stan Howard, who is Vicar’s stepfather.

Stan Howard is former PM John Howard’s brother, with Stan a former non-executive director of Oroton.

After balance date the deadline on the related-party cash advance facility was extended to mid next year, when more big decisions on the retailer’s future will need to be made.

When Vicars rescued the company in 2018, his $25m offer wiped out all equity holders – including his own 18 per cent stake.

Whether the billionaire can save the 84-year-old brand or whether he does his dough once again remains to be seen.

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Not so happy returns

But in the meantime our sympathies remain with investors of Will Vicars’ Caledonia Investments’ flagship global fund, which posted abysmal returns for the March quarter while its co-CIOs continue clucking with satisfaction that their strategies remain as hale and healthy as ever.

Not that we delight on bursting this polite fiction, but Margin Call notes that substantial dives have already been recorded across three of Caledonia’s substantial shareholdings for the month of April, indicating another round of pain to come when the next quarterly letter arrives.

Declines include the fund’s stake in real estate firm Zillow, which experienced a share price drop of 12 per cent and finished up on Wednesday at $US42.48 a share; without improvement, that amounts to a loss of value in the neighbourhood of $US100m.

Caledonia’s 9 per cent stake in sports betting company Flutter is also bearing flesh wounds after the share price fell 8.45 per cent, while its holdings in Just Eat Takeaway plunged by roughly 20 per cent over the past 30-odd days.

Such results for Q3 would stand to humble even the most inflated of corporate egos, but not Vicars and co-chief investment officer Mike Messara, whose bright, wild-eyed lunacy to shareholders suggests both are micro-dosing on the facts of reality – or something.

“We have never had more confidence in our portfolio than we do today,” they boasted in their letter, which began by informing shareholders of a -21.9 per cent return, fathoms below MSCI World Index’s -4.5 per cent.

The same letter equally assured Caledonia’s high-profile clients, among them the Darling family, that they were “free to submit a redemption request at any time”. It’s one piece of financial advice probably worth considering.

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Flooded with claims

Service NSW has already once begged for forgiveness after tarrying with its payments of Covid-19 support to small businesses during the Delta wave last year.

We suspect a second apology from the NSW government may soon be in the offing over a despicable shortage of payouts from the state’s disaster relief fund, established for victims of recent disaster events, including flooding in the state’s north.

One Nation’s Rod Roberts.

One Nation’s Rod Roberts sought answers to the number of applications received and paid out for the loss of essential household contents and structural grants as of April 30.

The government’s response was that it had received 1890 applications to May 4, of which a paltry 65 had been approved and a further 26 withdrawn. Another 551 applicants, presumably people who have lost literally everything, have been asked to provide additional information.

We’re sure it’s all readily accessible to them.

“Revenue NSW and Resilience NSW are currently working together to process Disaster Relief Grant applications as quickly as possible,” a Resilience NSW flak told Margin Call.

Will Vicars, Jennifer Child, Tom Forde

Rod Roberts