Woolies scratches surface of an Indigenous quarrel; Former EY partner’s Ukraine mercy mission

Construction works has begun in Castlemaine for a planned new Woolworths supermarket store.

If Woolworths isn’t careful it could find itself unwittingly dragged into its own ‘‘Juukan Gorge’’ crisis, following in the footsteps of miner Rio Tinto, which blew up a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site in a scandal that eventually blew up the Rio board.

In this case, it’s not entirely Woolworths’ fault. But when a crisis blows up you never know where the shrapnel will fly.

A property development company called Lascorp, run by Michael and Matthew Lasky, is developing a new Woolworths supermarket in the Victorian country town of Castlemaine.

An Indigenous group was commissioned to check over the site and gave it the all clear, with Lascorp getting all the other necessary approvals such as permit requirements and protocols for the development, which are being adhered to.

‘‘Not so fast,’’ says a local Indigenous tribal leader, Uncle Rick Nelson, a Dja Dja Wurrung elder who says the site intended for the supermarket could have culturally significant artefacts linked to a river where Aboriginal people spent time collecting food and using the land. “I have seen a plan for the site that shows a Woolworths supermarket right alongside the old water line and partially on top of the rock formation,” Uncle Rick said in an email to a Woolies executive.

Something doesn’t smell right about the Woolworths development.

“Woolworths seems to want to build to the boundary of the crown land and I am concerned that this will damage the rock formation and our artefacts.”

The problem is that bulldozing and soil removal have already begun.

“The community needs the opportunity to go around the site with a shovel and sift through the dirt to find thumbnail scrapers and other artefacts,” Uncle Rick said in his email to Woolworths.

“More often than not, when we look at sites like this, we do find cultural artefacts. This needs to take place before (his emphasis) any building takes place as the movement of dirt around the contours of the creek bed would likely destroy such artefacts. It appears that you have started building work even though I have been told that no building permit has been issued.”

Woolworths has placed a caveat over the land, so it can’t say it has nothing to do with development, even though it is Lascorp involved in the actual construction.

Woolworths wrote back to Uncle Rick, expressing its surprise over his stance.

“I explained the parameters of the development site, the work and reports done to date on cultural heritage including the most recent work that included a meeting with the Dju Dju (sic) Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation,” the supermarket executive wrote.

“I made the point that we do not own the site, but I committed to raising this with the developer (Lascorp). I have raised this with the developer, and it is up to them how they choose to proceed.”

Woolworths has thought about the issue a little more; it knows this could all easily get out of hand. While Lascorp is responsible for the site, Woolworths has met with local Indigenous groups and elders, and also reviewed the various independent reports conducted on the site. “We can confirm the planning process was in line with the requirements of Victorian legislation and regulation. However, we know there are outstanding concerns and we’ll continue to speak with members of the local Indigenous groups, elders and Lascorp about these,” Woolworths said.

Mercy mission

Chris Leptos – a former EY managing partner and now a senior adviser to financial advisory firm Flagstaff Partners, where he shares offices with Tony Burgess, Charles Goode and Peter Costello – has returned from Ukraine where he delivered five ambulances to the war-torn country.

The idea began when former US ambassador to Singapore Frank Lavin, who worked under late president George H.W. Bush and in the Ronald Reagan administration, contacted Leptos to raise funds for ambulances for Ukraine.

Within a few weeks Leptos and his friends had raised enough money in Australia to buy 12 second-hand ambulances, delivered over two convoys, and stock them with medical supplies (crutches, tourniquets, etc) that are needed in hospitals across Ukraine.

Leptos and his convoy took the northerly route: from France to Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland and then Ukraine.

“Driving in a five-vehicle ambulance convoy has its challenges, for example, every truck driver in Germany and Poland wants to overtake you, no matter how fast you are travelling,” Leptos says.

He has around $60,000 left over from the fundraising and after discussions with locals is looking for a crane with a 30 tonne capacity that can be used to rescue people trapped under rubble when buildings are bombed.

Big deal

If cash is king then Excelsior Capital reigns supreme among the ASX’s board of little-known microcaps.

Shareholders in the sleepy firm are rejoicing after it announced a deal to sell its electrical cable division, called CMI, to IPD for as much as $101m.

Keep in mind this was against a market cap of just $79.75m for Excelsior the day before the sale announcement was made. Oh, and by the way, Excelsior also owns a small investment portfolio worth $22.98m of which $17.83m is held in cash. It also has access to tax losses of around $32m, which can possibly be used against any capital gains on the CMI sale.

Currently the Excelsior share price is sitting at just under $2.90 to give it a market cap of $82.9m. The sale deal with IPD is for $92.1m in cash, with a further $8.9m to be paid later, subject to the CMI business clearing certain performance hurdles.

The investor rejoicing the most right now is probably Excelsior’s largest shareholder, Leanne Catelan, who owns 51.33 per cent of the company and is the daughter of the late property data mogul and RP Data founder Ray Catelan.

According to ASX documents, Ms Catelan had last bought more shares in Excelsior in late 2020 but then between November 28 and December 1 this year she bought around 322,000 shares to lift her stake from 50.22 to 51.33 per cent.

The deal to sell CMI was done on the morning of November 28 before the market opened, with Ms Catelan buying up shares a few hours later. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing here.

Late property data mogul and RP Data founder Ray Catelan.

Interestingly, Excelsior shareholders told Margin Call a week or so before the IPD deal was announced that a stockbroker was trying to get large parcels of stock in Excelsior for an anonymous client. Who that client was remains unknown.

Ms Catelan is a canny investor, or just lucky, or born into the right family. Recently she was reported to have sold her Potts Point grand Italianate mansion ‘‘Bomera’’ to billionaire steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta for $34m. The Catelan family also once owned Dajoshadita, the multimillion-dollar 33m yacht owned by late flamboyant Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin.

But back to Excelsior. Somewhat happy is another large shareholder, former merchant banker Peter Murray, who runs twin ASX-listed investment companies London City Equities and Imperial Pacific. In all he oversees a 12.3 per cent stake in Excelsior, making his businesses Excelsior’s second biggest shareholder.

We say “somewhat” happy because what Ms Catelan and her chairman, lawyer Danny Herceg, plan to do with that $101m cash is anyone’s guess and a mystery to Murray.

Margin Call contacted the offices of Excelsior to speak to Catelan and Herceg. Neither responded – still celebrating?

For how long can the Excelsior cashbox trade at a discount to its cash before it attracts a takeover bid or the board decides to pay a monster capital return?

Time will tell.