Top Aussie businessman, Akerman, Oxiana
July 22, 2008
Here are Stephen Mayne's three stories from the Crikey edition on Thursday, 22 June, 2006.
6. The 20 greatest contemporary Australian businessmen
Over the next few days Crikey will be asking our readers and business commentators for their nominations for a Crikey list of the 20 top Australian businessmen and women of all time. Today Stephen Mayne kicks off the discussion by nominating his top 20 Australian businessmen of the past 25 years.
By Stephen Mayne
As a professional critic of business, it doesn't come easily to suddenly start lauding our "greatest ever" business figures over the past 25 years, but the Crikey bosses have asked so here goes. Given I'm the first of several to show the hand, this effort is only alphabetical and the final rankings will come later:
Sir Ron Brierley: the only real survivor of the 1980s takeover entrepreneurs who built IEL into a powerhouse, knew when to sell for a great price to rival John Spalvins at Adsteam and still one of the great corporate strategists who continues to create value for his latest vehicle GPG.
Michael Chaney: quadrupled the value of the once unfashionable conglomerate Wesfarmers through a combination of brilliant execution (Bunnings) and sensible acquisitions. A thoroughly worthy Business Council President and new chairman of NAB and Woodside.
Roger Corbett: Flogging other people's stuff is not usually Hall of Fame material but Crusher Corbett has done it better than anyone over the past decade, quadrupling the Woolworths share price and going past rival Coles Myer on every measure.
Nobby Clark: resisted the temptations of deregulation and foreign competition to entrench NAB as our biggest bank at a time when listed rivals Westpac and ANZ almost went broke. Also pioneered the profitable move into the UK while ANZ and Westpac floundered with their foreign operations, and served with distinction as the fix-it chairman of Coles Myer and Foster's.
David Clarke: While Allan Moss and Nicholas Moore deserve the majority of the credit for Macquarie Bank's infrastructure bonanza, none of this would have happened if Clarke hadn't co-founded the bank in the early 1970s and remained as executive chairman to this day.
David Clarke: The building materials industry is hardly glamorous, but the success of Rinker has been staggering and the other David Clarke has been a director since 1987 and CEO since 1992. While so many others have crashed and burned in the US, Rinker is now capitalised at $15.4 billion.
John Cloney: has been the CEO or chairman of QBE Insurance for all but seven months of the last 25 years and after more than 20 acquisitions the $17 billion company is now a genuine international player in a tough global market.
Sir Rod Eddington: There have been other more successful Australians offshore but Eddington qualifies because he returned to Australia to run Ansett for four years and engineer a profitable exit for News Corp. Is now back in Melbourne as a professional director with the likes of News Corp and Rio Tinto. The successful stints running Cathay Pacific and British Airways are what puts Sir Rod on the top shelf.
Dr Peter Farrell: founded the sleep-disorder products company Resmed 17 years ago and remains chairman and CEO today of a company worth $4.3 billion with a global leadership position. A rare feat indeed in a country which usually serves up government-dependent service-sector business success stories.
David Gonski: along with Peter Scanlon and Graeme Samuel, one of the three smartest blokes that corporate Australia has produced. A brilliant corporate lawyer and investment banker whose work over the years for the likes of Kerry Packer and Frank Lowy has been complemented with impressive stints as chairman of Coca Cola Amatil and Hoyts, plus various not-for-profit endeavours.
Wal King: My first ever corporate dinner as a first year cadet in 1989 was with the Leighton boss who was spruiking a modest $9 million half year profit. Leighton is now easily the biggest player in the tough construction industry, and 2005-06 profit is tipped to rise 20% to a record $260 million. Successful expansion into Asia and the Middle East have capped a stellar career for King, who will notch up 20 years as CEO next year.
Paul Little: Starting with a $2.5 million management buyout of a small Pilbara-based transport company 20 years ago, the Toll Holdings boss now dominates Australia's transport and logistics industry and is worth more than $500 million to boot.
Frank Lowy: went from nothing to controlling the world's biggest shopping centre empire, delivering spectacular returns for investors while building a personal fortune worth $5.4 billion with uninterrupted profit growth. Buying Channel Ten was the only blemish and the ethics are sometimes questionable, but Westfield is now worth $30 billion and Australia needs many more Frank Lowys.
Brian McNamee: Few Australian companies have global leadership in a sector, let alone in a business as tough as healthcare, but CSL's CEO for the past 17 years has transformed a sleepy government business that was floated at $2.40 a share in 1994 into the world's biggest blood products company with a market capitalisation of almost $10 billion and a share price at $53.
Chris Morris: Australia seriously lacks IT entrepreneurs and companies which take on the world and Computershare is both, having developed great home grown systems and then taken them to global leadership of share registry management, thanks largely to a raft of well executed acquisitions.
Allan Moss: Macquarie Bank floated ten years ago at $6 a share, so Moss has delivered an 11-fold return while trouncing the Wall Street majors in Australia and pioneering the Millionaire Factory's extraordinary binge to become the world's biggest non-government owner and manager of infrastructure asset. Deserves every penny of his ridiculous $21 million pay packet.
Rupert Murdoch: inherited an estate in October 1952 worth $9 million in today's dollars and now owns more than $10 billion worth of shares in a $90 billion company which is clearly the world's most global media empire. Controversial as ever with Fox News and Iraq war boosterism but for value creation and successful risk-taking he's hard to be beat.
Kerry Packer: certainly not the greatest, as John Howard claimed, but sheer ruthlessness and ability to work pliant governments created a fortune that only Rupert Murdoch can beat. However, he started with $100 million and spent far too much time spending it rather than building what could have become a globally significant empire if he hadn't been so Australia-focused.
Gary Pemberton: Many successful CEOs later crash on the board circuit and get criticised for never "owning" a business but Pemberton has done it all. Started with a stellar 11-year stint as CEO of Brambles, followed by excellent performance as chairman of Qantas and the NSW TAB. He then bought into Billabong and was the chairman who floated it and took it to the world, creating a $200 million personal fortune.
Dick Pratt: Australia's third richest man has achieved Australian packaging dominance, five-star environmental performance and successful offshore expansion without having to raise a dollar of outside equity.
Honourable mentions: Doug Rathbone, Peter Scanlon, James Strong, Chris Corrigan, Gordon Merchant, Gerry Harvey, John Ralph, David Murray, Sir Arvi Parbo, David Hains, Frank O'Halloran, Leon Davis and John Grill.
20. Judge blasts forgetful Akerman for "fundamental mistake"
By Stephen Mayne
Having failed to show up at the Australian Press Council last week to face a complaint I brought, it now emerges that blundering Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman has also tried very hard to avoid giving evidence in a defamation case brought by professional NRMA trouble-maker Richard Talbot.
Check out this entertaining transcript from day eight of the NSW Supreme Court battle on 16 June. Day nine unfolds today.
Piers tried to defend a column blasting Talbot through interrogatories in which he claimed to have spoken to former NRMA chairman Ross "Sir Lunchalot" Turnbull and two other confidential sources. He then recanted on the Turnbull source line, such that the judge was keen to have Piers cross-examined. The News Ltd counsel insisted this couldn't happen "because Mr Molomby (Talbot's counsel) would be at large in cross-examining Mr Akerman about any relevant issue in the case."
Oh dear, fancy having to actually answer questions.
Justice Gibson is not exactly impressed as this exchange shows:
HER HONOUR: It would be a very strong submission, because you see, I don't see Mr Akerman deposing to having us believe based only on the information of the two sources. What he said is that he made a mistake, but you see, if he made a mistake about that, he could have made a mistake about a lot of things.Allowing Akerman to continue besmirching our fine profession of journalism is surely another fundamental mistake. Wonder if Piers will mention this emerging $100,000-plus hit for News Ltd when he catches up with Rupert during the Sun King's current visit?
BLACKBURN: That's one of the problems of, in any case, in any event, your Honour. Witnesses make mistakes, witnesses routinely make mistakes, but it would be a bold submission to say that because – you see, Mr Akerman, your Honour, is not generally deposing to an enormous mistake; he is staying, yes, I spoke to Mr Turnbull, but I accept now that it must have been after he was a director and it couldn't have been before the matter complained of. Mr Molomby, I agree, your Honour, can make whatever submission he likes about how that affects Mr Akerman's credit and I can't prevent those submissions from being made.
HER HONOUR: What bigger mistake could Mr Akerman have made?
BLACKBURN: It's really quite a small mistake in the scheme of things.
HER HONOUR: He's named the one person who was the director, the person who was the premature adjourner. This was his source for the story. The chairman of the NRMA, the incoming chairman of the NRMA board. And it turns out that he never spoke to him.
BLACKBURN: These interrogatories were answered in May 2005. Your Honour, can I just take that up. To what issue, how can my learned friend, with a straight face, say Mr Akerman couldn't have honestly held the opinion represented by the comment because he made a mistake about whether he spoke to Mr Turnbull or not. Your Honour, that is a massive non sequitur.
HER HONOUR: Mr Blackburn, how can any journalist who writes an article like this make a fundamental mistake about where he got the information from and expect to have his evidence accepted as to his belief of the information. That is such a fundamental mistake.
26. The real scandal at Oxiana
By Stephen Mayne, small Oxiana shareholder
After copping the second biggest protest vote against its remuneration report over the past year, booming miner Oxiana Resources has finally come out and done this mea culpa two months after the AGM took place.
However, chairman Barry Cusack and CEO Owen Hegarty have focused on issues which were not the point of the protest, and both Andrew Trounson in The Australian and Michael Pascoe in Crikey yesterday have missed the point. The issue had nothing to do with option valuations and the involvement of non-executive directors in incentive schemes.
The scandal involved changing the performance period on Hegarty's options. Hegarty was issued four million options to buy shares at $1.20 apiece at the 2004 AGM, but the notice of meeting only stated that "the options will vest on 1 June 2006, subject to the satisfaction of performance hurdles".
The subsequent 2004 annual report, released in March 2005, clarified that the hurdles were as follows:
- 50% will vest on 1 June 2006 if the total shareholder return of Oxiana for the year ended June 30, 2005 exceeds the median of the total shareholder return of competitor companies.
- a further 50% will vest on 1 June 2006 if the total shareholder return of Oxiana for the year ended 30 June 2005 is in the top quartile of the total shareholder return of competitor companies.
- 50% will vest on 1 June 2006 if the total shareholder return of Oxiana for the two years ended 31 December 2005 exceeds the median of the total shareholder return of comparator companies;
- a further 50% will vest on 1 June 2006 if the total shareholder return of Oxiana for the two years ended 31 December 2005 is in the top quartile of the total shareholder return of comparator companies.
That's a paper profit of $7 million for Hegarty at the expense of all other shareholders who will be diluted. Why the hell can't the company just confess that this is the issue rather than putting out complete smokescreens?
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