Worner’s back in the saddle

ILLUSTRATION: Rod Clement

It’s Spring Carnival time, so there’s high hopes former Seven boss — and noted racing aficionado — Tim Worner will finally come out of hiding.

The man known to friend and foe as “Woops” kept a low profile on a year-long gardening leave stint that has only recently ended.

The deal cost Seven chairman Kerry Stokes a cool $3m to keep Worner from the clutches of any media rivals given his status as one of Australia’s best ever content creators. (Just don’t mention the pesky cricket broadcast deal he left Seven with.)

Worner has apparently spent his 12 months not under house arrest (he’s not from Melbourne) but instead but he’s been spotted actually gardening as well as surfing, fishing and watching a lot of racing on television.

He also turned up briefly in the mounting yard last November at Flemington to see his Constantinople not win the Melbourne Cup, and then joined in the revelry on the train ride back to the CBD after the races.

Oddly, Worner also is understood to have undertaken a brief but extremely unsuccessful stint helping out at a very small cattle station in the past year.

But while he doesn’t mind a decent wagyu steak Worner is definitely more interested in horses than cows, and market chatter has him in recent weeks deep in conversation regarding some sort of combination of his two passions: racing and programming.

Margin Call would like to see him team up with another of our favourites in Racing NSW boss P eter V’landys, who apparently also runs another sport.

Wags have suggested PVL as the next boss of Tabcorp — he’d certainly be paid more there than in racing and he’s placed the NRL CEO job in the hands of Andrew Abdo — given he knows more about wagering than just about anyone else in Australia

Why not team him up with Worner who could run Tabcorp’s Sky Channel? Stranger things have happened, but it is unlikely. We’d pay to watch PVL renegotiate Tabcorp’s joint venture deal with Racing Victoria though.

Our bet is Worner (and V’Landys? Who knows) is doing the numbers on some sort of horses and broadcasting and potentially wagering venture or idea at least.

Let’s not forget that Seven once kicked the tyres on a racing and betting business idea while Worner was the boss there, roughly around the time it entered a joint venture with Victorian racing that saw the free-to-air network Racing.com born.

Watch this space. It might not be the wisest thing to back one of Worner’s horses, but it’s a decent bet he will somehow find his way into racing at the least.

Meeting of minds

Fund manager Geoff Wilson copped the ire of billionaire retailer Solomon Lew this week when it came to their shareholdings (respectively, small and large) in the struggling Myer.

As this column noted, Solly lashed out at Wilson and his so-called “arrogance” in backing Garry Hounsell for the Myer chair over the “wealth of retail experience” Lew’s Premier Investments could offer.

Wilson played a straight bat in return, labelling Lew a “great retailer” though admitted to not currently holding Premier shares.

But we hear the duo at least managed to have a chat about things on Friday.

While we were not privy to the discussions, we’re betting Solly reminded Wilson about his retailing prowess and surely Wilson in return thanked him for all the publicity he’s been getting of late.

Wilson moved on during Friday anyway, firing off a missive of his own regarding his WAM Capital’s bid for the Concentrated Leaders Fund listed investment company.

CLF has formed what it is calling an independent board committee, consisting of Brian Sherman, Barry Sechos and John Martin.

Except Wilson is arguing Sherman and Sechos are not independent.

A noted Sydney investor and philanthropist, Sherman has been on the CLF board since its inception in 1987.

And as Wilson points out in his missive (alas, not as stinging as the one Solly sent about him and Myer), CLF’s own corporate governance statement says: “Mr Sherman does have a substantial shareholding and is not considered by the board to be ‘independent’ having regard to the definition of independence set out below and based on the recommended by the ASX Corporate Governance Council.”

The corporate governance statement also says Mr Sechos, the CLF company secretary, is a director of an entity related to Sherman and “is also not considered by the board to be ‘independent’”.

CLF has written to its shareholders telling them to “ignore WAM Capital’s opportunistic, conditional and unsolicited offer”, take no action for now and await further instructions.

Don’t call me Bruce

There’s nothing like a legal stoush to get Bruce McWilliam going.

Word is Seven’s commercial director and legal svengali hasn’t been as excited as he is regarding the network’s stoush with Cricket Australia over broadcast rights since the last time he sold a Sydney mansion for tens of millions.

While Seven boss J ames Warburton has been voluble publicly, saying cricket is “ripping off its fans” with a poorer quality Big Bash League looming, McWilliam is driving Seven’s legal strategy.

Seven has also briefed Neil Young QC on the matter, with legal letters now flying in faster than a Mitchell Starc delivery.

Young and McWilliam were both part of ASIC’s failed tilt against Harold Mitchell over tennis rights. McWilliam was a star witness last year and Young represented former Tennis Australia president Steve Healy.

More importantly, McWilliam’s painting should have won the Archibald Prize last year. Maybe Mr Young, could investigate that crime too.