A business job fit for a King

What a success Grant King’s tenure as Business Council of Australia president has been.

Corporate tax cuts for big businesses are further away than ever, the energy policy pushed by the lobby group is in tatters, and that's all before the outcome of royal commissions into the financial services industry and the aged care sector.

Grant King and Jennifer Westacott. Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:

So no doubt the BCA’s members will be pleased to hear that King will stick around for even longer than first anticipated, having already pushed retirement from November last year to early this year.

Now we hear no change at the top is likely until after Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s planned May election, and perhaps as late as June (and we are reminded by BCA insiders that King's term could technically extend until November).

We were also told that by late December, at least one other person on the BCA’s board apart from Qantas boss Alan Joyce — who we reported in September had been approached — had turned down the top job working alongside the lobby’s well-regarded chief executive Jennifer Westacott.

We’ve already noted some of the high-powered board, which includes Coca-Cola Amatil managing director Alison Watkins and Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman, had considered former Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder (who was not open to the position).

But the BCA has been successful in making at least one appointment.

Former Howard government minister Warwick Smith, better known for his stints as a Macquarie and ANZ executive, is the new chairman of the BCA’s China Leadership Group.

(He’s also the chairman of Chinese-backed property firm Aqualand.)

Smith has been put in charge of organising putting BCA members including AMP, BHP, Deutsche Bank and Virgin Australia in touch to talk about trade with China.

One problem solved, another left achingly unresolved.

Going underground

With a political career dead, buried and cremated, having failed to grab the Liberal nomination during the Wentworth byelection, it is somewhat fitting Katherine O’Regan has turned up as the chairwoman of one of Sydney’s largest cemeteries.

It turns out that while the souffle may only (half) rise once, that effort can get a handsome reward.

Gazing into the rear-view mirror, we recall O’Regan was Morrison’s pick to become the party’s candidate in Wentworth after the resignation of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Now we learn O’Regan has landed on the board of the Rookwood Cemetery Trust.

With that honour, bestowed upon her by Lands Minister Paul Toole four days before Christmas, our sources tell us O’Regan stands to receive a $35,000 yearly stipend.

And while we ruminate on Wentworth, CBD hears there's a new romance raising eyebrows.

Independent Wentworth MP Kerryn Phelps and her wife Jackie Stricker-Phelps have had to make room at the dinner table for one more, for their daughter Gabi Stricker-Phelps is dating ... a Young Liberal.

We hear Mosman Young Liberal President Lachlan Finch and Stricker-Phelps have commenced a cross-party relationship of sorts, and while it has some talking, the family seems perfectly at ease.

Attention has even turned to where Young Finch will campaign come May.

We're told he'll stay far from Wentworth, where the man who defeated O'Regan for the Liberal nod, Dave Sharma, is due to try his luck again.

Right hand, left hand

Solomon Lew's Premier Investments is pursuing Myer over its poor performance, but one of its directors remains on the financially distressed Village Roadshow.Credit: Eddie Jim

With declining sales, cancelled dividends, and a board  responsible for draining away hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder wealth over five short years, it’s easy to see why Solomon Lew and his Premier Investments vehicle want the Myer board sacked.

So what does Lew’s fellow Premier director Tim Antonie make of the boardroom mess at Melbourne cinema operator and London marketing outfit Village Roadshow, where brothers John Kirby and Robert Kirby seem millimetre away from coming to physical blows?

We ask only because Antonie, once investment bank UBS's managing director, is one of three independent directors that make up the rest of the Village Roadshow board.

His boss Lew would likely take one look at Village Roadshow and feel his investment over at Myer wasn’t the worst place he could have put his money.

By our count, Village Roadshow is burdened with declining sales, cancelled dividends and a board which has been responsible for losing almost $500 million in five short years.

With apologies to Lew, who made these remarks about Myer chairman Garry Hounsell in a letter to shareholders, we’d say: “if only Village Roadshow knew movies as well as they know excuses”.

But who are we to begrudge Antonie his pay day.

His reward for keeping faith as Wet ‘n’ Wild Sydney was flogged at a fire sale, an investment in their Hollywood movie studio was written down to zero, and Robert piled the company cellar high with $1.4 million worth of wine from his own Mornington Peninsula vineyard?

An easy $200,000 last year alone.

These issues are all the fault of the current Village Roadshow board, as Lew might say.

“We must hold them to account for their failures.”