By Kylar Loussikian & Samantha Hutchinson
Too many years reclined in the sun by the Beverly Wilshire pool might have tarnished Village Roadshow chief executive Grahame Burke’s memory, but we assume the faculties of introspection, humility and self-awareness all fell away by themselves.
“Big Bucks” Burke, on yet another Hollywood sojourn, leaves behind a carcass of a company with a share price cratered from $7.50 three years ago to barely $2.53 today.
Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:
Such a staggering record of corporate woe didn’t stop Burke, with a straight face, ruminating on why gaming billionaire James Packer became another Hollywood shipwreck after selling out of his venture with Brett Ratner, RatPac, last year.
“The losses at RatPac were due to the profligate and ‘Hollywood’ overhead style of Brett Ratner coupled with poor development and lousy choices of projects, some of which would have been complete dead losses,” Burke said in Damon Kitney’s biography of Packer.
At least Packer was pissing his own money away, unlike our man at the Wilshire, one of the greatest destroyers of shareholder wealth this side of a financial institution.
Los Angeles-based Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, of which the local company owns 20 per cent, had no fewer than nine co-productions with RatPac (including 2015 box office bomb Jupiter Ascending).
Will Burke, Village Roadshow boss since 1988, take responsibility for that?
Maybe former Rothschild banker David Kingston had a point when he turned up to the Village Roadshow annual general meeting last month to find out how Burke and his chairman, Melbourne business identity Robert Kirby, had managed to keep their jobs.
Village Roadshow’s own Hollywood foray has been so successful that the value of the investments had to be written down to exactly zero this year.
The good news: Village Roadshow’s losses from the movie production business recovered from an appalling nadir of $487 million in 2016 to rest this year at an equally disgraceful $160 million.
No wonder Burke found the money not only to buy $700,000 in pinot from Kirby’s Yabby Lake vineyard, but to splash out another $88,000 to rent his artwork too.
The lunch round
Spotted at lunch at Rockpool Bar & Grill in Sydney yesterday: Credit Suisse managing director John Knox and (separately) PremierState lobbyist Michael Photios.
Nearby, businessman Maurice Newman dined with Advance Australia director Gerard Benedet and The Australian’s editor-in-chief Christopher Dore.
We hear Transport Minister Andrew Constance turned up later in the afternoon, as did NSW Education Department secretary Mark Scott.
In Melbourne, we noted Myer Family Investments deputy chair Peter Yates at institutional Collins Place joint Kenzan with outgoing Virgin Australia chief executive John Borghetti.
Here come the feds
Jeremy Buckingham is being expelled from the party after allegations were raised in Parliament (which he denies), causing a major rift in the NSW Greens. Credit: Simone De Peak
Everything is fine, say the NSW Greens as their house burns rapidly to the ground.
The situation as it stands is this: Newtown MP Jenny Leong used Parliament to make public allegations about Upper House MP Jeremy Buckingham despite a party inquiry finding there was insufficient evidence to take any action.
Then Upper House MPs Cate Faehrmann and Justin Fields said they would consider quitting.
Now the Australian Greens, with an apparent green light from the federal party room, want to impose an independent referee and start a review of the NSW Greens.
An early version of the plan, seen by this column, shows $20,000 would be set aside to “oversee a review of the Greens NSW, including the complaints process and the Greens NSW Constitution”.
But we were also told that by Monday afternoon that plan was in some disarray, with state party members pushing back against a federal review of the bin fire that is the NSW Greens.
Cutting the lawyer's lunch
Victorian CFFMEU boss John Setka wants to blacklist law firms who have a history of being "anti-union".Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Just when we’d written off the Labor National Conference as a prizewinning snoozefest, the CFMMEU yesterday began circulating a left-wing motion of the exact ilk Bill Shorten must have been dreading – and possibly every major law firm, for that matter.
The comrades in Adelaide want a Shorten-led government to blacklist firms with a history of “anti-union” or “anti-worker” behaviour from government work.
The push is being led by Victorian unionists John Setka and his deputy Shaun Reardon – no strangers to a bit of court action themselves.
It would stop $1.6 billion in work flowing annually to firms like Herbert Smith Freehills, who represented Boral executives Peter Head and Paul Dalton in court action against Setka.
Chicago-based Seyfarth Shaw is number one on the firing line after representing the union’s bete noire, the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
Union sources said targets could also extend to MinterEllison (who told us they were “neither anti-union nor anti-worker”), Clayton Utz and Mallesons.