Wrestling to reduce ANZ bank risk

Illustration: Peter Nicholson.

What will be left of ANZ’s saintly boss Shayne Elliott by the time the bank’s full-year results are released in November?

Like a suicide bomber perpetually reincarnated as a suicide bomber, the bank’s former head of risk Chris Page keeps exploding.

Once again, Page stole the show at the Victorian Supreme Court — the theatre for ANZ’s high stakes battle against fertiliser entrepreneurs Pankaj Oswal and wife Radhika.

Yesterday the court was told that Page put Pankaj in a headlock in an effort to get some mortgage papers signed.

Page’s wrestling moves followed his earlier star turn in the case for sending racially charged emails to his then boss, Mike Smith.

Before we could ask what next, Page made it a trifecta by using language we would call sexist. No question mark required.

Here’s an extract from an email from Page to ANZ in-house legal minds Bob Santamaria and Guy Gaudion and his reference to the flamboyant Radhika.

“Sunday morning, 9am here. We negotiate co-op agreement and he signs all documents with wifey.” There’s no typo there.

Would it be OK to call ANZ director Ilana Atlas, who is married to former ASIC boss Tony D’Aloisio, a “wifey”?

And what of ANZ director (and Tabcorp chair) Paula Dwyer, whose hubby is journalist Charles Happell? Is she a “wifey” too?

If he can manage to get internet reception in his mung-bean serving Balinese meditation retreat, we bet former Bell Potter exec Angus Aitken is whooping for joy.

Aitken is the one — you might remember — who is suing ANZ after the bank’s gender police person Paul Edwards took to Twitter to suggest he was sexist. That was after Aitken wrote a note about incoming ANZ chief financial officer Michelle Jablko that argued her investment banking pedigree made her unsuitable for the role.

Imagine if he’d called her “wifey”.

Aitken’s case

Yes, if you were wondering, the head of legal affairs at ANZ, Bob Santamaria, is the son of the late Cold War warrior B.A. Santamaria, who was famously the political crush of the young Tony Abbott.

In addition to the Oswal case, ANZ’s most senior in-house legal adviser, Santamaria, is also overseeing the bank’s legal dealings with Colin Bell’s former employee, Angus Aitken.

ANZ has hired Herbert Smith Freehills to help them on the case. Aitken has hired defamation lawyer Mark O’Brien. Fairfax Media is helping out with publicity.

No word yet on when this one will be resolved after team Aitken rejected ANZ’s peace offering — an apology and “limited” damages.

There have been rumours in banking circles that the bank’s cutting-edge spokesman Paul Edwards is planning to apologise over live streaming app Periscope, having labelled Twitter “so last month”.

It’s almost enough of a reason to open an account.

Howard’s honour

At last night’s 10th anniversary American Australian Association dinner at Sydney’s Westin, former prime minister John Howard was spied wearing none other than his Presidential Medal of Freedom award around his neck. Remember this award was bestowed on him in 2009 by then US president George Bush for Howard’s role as an ally in the fight against terrorism. This was where Bush described Howard as the “man of steel”. The medal is the highest award that the US can hand out to civilians. Indeed, Howard is one of only two Australians awarded this honour — the other is Nancy Wake.

Howard said the depth of the bond between Australia and America was visible in his own family, noting that, after 12 years in the US, his son Richard had returned to Sydney with an American fiancee, Ellen Dadanina.

John Howard receives his medal from George W. Bush in 2009.

The impending long weekend might just afford ABC boss Michelle Guthrie (also at the AAA dinner) the time to trip back to her old home turf of Singapore to tie one on with her celeb chef partner Darren Farr.

As Guthrie’s international media career unfolded, Farr harboured a dream to open his own restaurant. That became a reality when he threw open the doors of the LoKal in Singapore in mid-2014.

Just as the restaurant started humming, Guthrie up and left for Sydney to run the national broadcaster. Farr decided to stay put to manage his business.

On Sunday he’s throwing a bash to celebrate the restaurant’s second birthday. He’s hopeful at least one of the women in his life will make the celebration.

The couple’s daughters are jet-setters, too. One is at a boarding school in Sydney and the other has just returned from studying at New York University’s Shanghai campus and will soon head to the US.

Hartman’s comeback

Reformed insider trader John Hartman is back at his desk in Perth this week and getting on with billionaire Andrew Forrest’s business after his stint in the witness box in Sydney in his former mate Oliver Curtis’s trial. Twiggy gave Hartman, whose wife Alice is expecting their second child, another chance after he was released from Silverwater jail in early 2012.

Ever since, Hartman has climbed Twiggy’s ladder to now run his agribusiness interests at Minderoo Group, with the diversifying billionaire backing the now 31-year-old all the way.

Amid the Curtis trial and just after Hartman had finished his evidence, Twiggy publicly endorsed Hartman, who is on the board of Minderoo’s Harvey Beef.

He described Hartman, who took time off to attend the Sydney trial, as a “gentleman” of “vision and tenacity”.

The Hartmans now live in a converted warehouse apartment in Fremantle, which they bought in 2013 for $1.3 million. Their lives are now a world away — or at least the breadth of the Nullarbor — from Sydney, where Curtis will be sentenced next week.

John Hartman with another employee of the Minderoo Group.

Hancock rebrand

Moving to another Perth-based billionaire Gina Rinehart, who seems to have had a recent change of mind.

Last week we revealed the boss of Hancock Prospecting had put her foot on the name “Hancock Corporation”.

The rebrand seemed just the thing to mark the business’s evolution from prospector to miner after Roy Hill came into operation late last year.

But with the news having gone public, Australia’s richest woman (last valued at $6 billion) has pulled the plug on the new name, as well as another option “Hancock Group”.

Seems everything old is
new again in the Rinehart kingdom.

Farewell, big spender

Since moving to Perth in January 2008 to head up the Australian operations of US oil and gas giant Chevron, Roy Krzywosinski has established himself as arguably the biggest spender in Australia.

Krzywosinski has been the man in charge of spending a combined $US83.7bn ($112.6bn) building the Gorgon and Wheatstone liquefied natural gas plants in WA on behalf of Chevron and its partners. That works out at $US27m in outlay each and every day during his time in Australia — or almost $US38m a day assuming he’s taken the weekends off.

Given that sort of largesse, it’s unsurprising that his official farewell at the State Reception Centre in Perth’s Kings Park last night attracted plenty of politicians. Really, after Chevron’s outlay, they should have given him Rottnest Island as a souvenir.

WA Premier Colin Barnett, a man who loves a good LNG plant, was there along with his Resources Minister Sean L’Estrange and Minister for State Development Bill Marmion. Opposition Leader and — according to Newspoll — premier-in-waiting Mark McGowan also made it along.

Despite the scale of Gorgon and Wheatstone, the looming production from the two projects isn’t going to solve the budget pressures facing Barnett and likely to be inherited by McGowan.

Instead, the royalties from the two mega-projects will go to a pesky commonwealth that is already gouging WA’s GST revenues.