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CBD

The wizard and his failed apprentice

The brains behind the unofficial Mark Bouris fan website has finally outed himself.

The "online entrepreneur", Mitch Barnes, told CBD he felt inspired to create the website after auditioning for the upcoming Australian version of The Apprentice reality TV show, which will be hosted by the Wizard Home Loans founder.

Barnes said he was one of the final three contestants in the Melbourne auditions for the show. "After not getting onto the show, I decided to dig deeper into Mark Bouris's background online and found, to my surprise, he didn't even have an official website," explained Barnes.

"I saw an opportunity and decided to create him his own fan site so at least there would be one reliable and consistent source of information about him online," he said.
 
Barnes said he hoped to one day meet the "amazingly skilled businessman". At least Bouris has one guaranteed viewer for his show which premieres next Monday.

In the latest plea on his fansite, Barnes has put out a SOS for someone to put him in contact with his hero.

"The webmaster of markbouris.com (me) would love to meet Mark Bouris for a one-on-one chat, ask questions about him, etc, and then possibly report back the experience," it says.

Truth Cruncher

Macquarie Group will no doubt be chuffed to learn that its least favourite banking analyst, Brett le Mesurier, has started his own broking research firm, one month after leaving Wilson HTM.

Le Mesurier's new outfit, Axiome Equities, will provide research on "the major financial institutions" out of its Governor Phillip Tower office.

With the first batch of Axiome research due to roll off the production line next month, le Mesurier assured CBD he would still be crunching the numbers on Macquarie.

"I haven't lost their phone number," he said. As for the name Axiome, the French-surnamed le Mesurier said: "We wanted something that had an analytic feel to it and we've gone with the French spelling of it."

Axiome, we are told, means a self-evident truth and something that does not need to be explained.

Le Mesurier's team includes a former Trowbridge Deloitte analyst, Anthony Vogel, the former Pricewaterhouse Coopers actuarial consultant Azib Khan and research salesman Tony Davison.

Fancy thoughts

One wonders if the boys and girls at Babcock & Brown were still in the market for any fancy cars when they were desperately trying to find a strategic equity partner to bail them out last year.

The B&B rescue plan, the French sounding Project Veyron, came just three months after the Bugatti Veyron wowed crowds at the Melbourne Motor Show.

The car named after the French racing driver, Pierre Veyron, has a price tag of more than $2 million.

Spare chopper

The financial crisis appears to have affected not only MFS founder Michael King but also some of the former opponents of his Elysian Fields horse polo team.

If anyone thought the Victorian businessman and founder of the Hyde Hill polo team, Bernard Roux, has been quiet in the skies recently, there could be an explanation.

The French-surnamed entrepreneur's Eurocopter 120B is up for sale after being repossessed by the Commonwealth Bank earlier in the year.

A tender for the helicopter has been called by the auctioneer Grays "under instructions from a leading bank", after the Roux-controlled Inchalla Nominees was tipped into administration earlier in the year.

Inchalla had a $1.1 million loan taken out over the chopper. Roux's Hyde Hill polo team often competed against King's Elysian Fields team and even Jamie Packer's Ellerston.

Roux runs the finance concern Fleetsmart Australia and often copped a few noise complaints over his helicopter in the cashed-up bayside town of Portsea.

But there seems to be some confusion over the sale of Roux's chopper.

One budding buyer in Perth has already infuriated the auctioneer by putting the Eurocopter up for sale on another website.

"He's trying to sell it before he buys it," said an irked Grays operative, Denis Matthews, who claimed his sale was being "hijacked".

But the would-be asset shuffler, Damien Dew, said advertising something for sale that you had not yet purchased was "not uncommon".

"I've got someone interested who wants to bid for the aircraft," said Dew, who has a $US990,000 ($1.1 million) sale sticker on the chopper.

Dew seems to be taking a leaf out of the books of asset flickers such as the now collapsed Babcock & Brown and MFS Limited.

His assessment of Roux's flying machine: "It's like having a M5 BMW. It looks good, but not really." Adding to the confusion, Roux told CBD the chopper had already been sold by his company.

As for his other business concerns, Roux said: "We're just progressing on as we normally would."

A wind-up order against Roux's Fleetsmart was lodged in the Victorian Supreme Court last week.

Walker lament 
 
If you think Fairfax Media's outgoing chairman, Ron Walker, plans to spend more time with his brood, think again.

"It would be ridiculous for me to say I will be spending more time with my family. I spend enough time with them already," remarked Ron on his looming career change.

The 70-year-old, who still likes to pump iron and power walk, plans to spend more time boating, golfing and visiting Europe.

Walker also appears sad about certain customs appearing to have left the company boardroom.

"Gone are the days when you could pop in the office once a month, have a gin and tonic, sign the minutes and go home."

Got a tip? email srochfort@smh.com.au

 

 

Insider

 
Edited by Jamie Freed

Using its loaf, AWB looks to a joint venture for ACM

The decision by AWB to consider a joint venture with a global commodities player over its Australian Commodities Management business is a consequence of the death of the single desk and increasing concentration in the agribusiness sector worldwide.

The name of the partner has not been revealed, but it is understood AWB is talking to only one party.

Logical candidates would include Glencore, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Noble Group, Olam, Bunge and some of the Japanese trading houses.

Noble this week said it would use much of the proceeds of China Investment Corp's $US850 million ($976 million) investment to increase its exposure to agribusiness globally.

The structure of AWB's joint venture has yet to be finalised, but it is thought that AWB may emerge with only 40 to 50 per cent of its existing grain marketing, pool management services, harvest finance and logistics business – basically every asset outside its Landmark rural services business.

AWB is also looking to sell its AWB Geneva operation to the same party.

Earlier this year, Credit Suisse valued the ACM business at about $450 million and the Geneva operation at about $150 million, compared with Landmark at about $800 million.

Since AWB lost the single desk after the UN oil-for-food scandal, it has retained about 25 per cent of the wheat export market, with Western Australia's CBH now the largest bulk exporter.

AWB hopes a partnership with a global commodities trader would help give it the scale needed to compete in a rapidly consolidating market.

There appears to be some confidence that AWB and its partner can seal a deal by the end of the year, but of course nothing is certain. In AWB's case, third parties might find a partnership more attractive than a takeover, in part because of the potential for ongoing legal liabilities resulting from the oil-for-food scandal.

As for AWB, it wants to assure the market it will not act like a holding company after it sells a significant chunk of its ACM business.

It will fix its ailing balance sheet through a $459 million raising underwritten by Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs JBWere and UBS, combined with the upcoming sale of its stake in Hi-Fert and its Landmark loan book.

The additional gains from the Geneva sale and ACM joint venture are likely to be put towards appropriate acquisitions to help AWB grow its business.

Friend of mine

BHP Billiton has recently bemoaned the lack of available takeover targets that fit its requirements for scale and quality, although its chief commercial officer, Alberto Calderon, said it was examining four or five specific opportunities quite closely.

There has been recent talk among bankers, and now Citi analysts, that one of the few targets that would fit the bill for a company such as BHP is locally-listed Riversdale Mining, which owns a large chunk of a truly world-class coking coal province in Mozambique.

But those hoping for an immediate takeover are likely to be disappointed. The company is unlikely to be a serious target for at least a year.

Next September it expects to submit an environmental impact statement as part of its quest for permission to barge large amounts of coal down the Zambezi River.

Riversdale envisions its Benga project, with a 4 billion tonne resource, could produce 20 million tonnes of quality coking coal a year, meaning it could make a difference even to a company the size of BHP.

India's Tata Steel has a 35 per cent stake in that project. Also, Riversdale will release a maiden resource statement for its wholly-owned Muarazi West project next month.

Over the longer term, that project could potentially be larger than Benga, although it would be totally dependent on barging. Riversdale has a tight share register, dominated by Passport Capital, Ken Talbot's Talbot Group and Tata, which means any deal would likely need to be friendly.

The management team, which includes two former RBC Capital Markets investment bankers, is pragmatic and expects the company could eventually be sold to a larger player, with barging approvals seen as the catalyst.

Brew-ha-ha

Now that Lion Nathan shareholders have approved a takeover from Japan's Kirin, the market is punting on when, rather than if, Foster's Group will finally choose to separate its beer and wine businesses.

Molson Coors already owns just under 5 per cent of Foster's in what is seen as a strategic stake in the event of a breakup.

But the hot money is on SABMiller as the more likely acquirer of the beer business. Credit Suisse yesterday said it expected Foster's would split beer and wine sometime next year, with the beer business an attractive target for global brewers and the wine division ripe for another $1 billion or so in writedowns.

Coca-Cola Amatil's boss, Terry Davis, has apparently been pretty brazen in recent investor briefings, envisioning a world in the not-too-distant-future where a combined Coca-Cola/SABMiller and Pepsi/A-B InBev emerge as the only truly global beverage giants.

So it is little wonder that Foster's boss, Ian Johnston, couldn't resist a parting dig at the small size of the CCA/SABMiller Pacific Beverages joint venture at an analyst briefing last month.

It is worth noting that the joint venture would require any purchase of the Foster's beer business to be split equally between the pair.

jfreed@smh.com.au

 

 

Briefs

Courts

Hardie appeals

James Hardie Industries is appealing against a NSW Supreme Court decision that fined the company $80,000 for breaches of continuous disclosure rules, imposed hefty fines on former board members and banned them from managing a company for varying lengths of time over misleading statements about a compensation fund for asbestos victims. In a statement to the stock exchange, Hardie said it had lodged an appeal against the declarations and orders made by Justice Ian Gzell.

Funds

Trinity action

Property fund manager Trinity is taking legal action to recover a controversial $1 million success fee paid to a political lobbyist in Queensland. Trinity, chaired by the former Queensland treasurer Keith De Lacy, has filed a claim seeking the money back and alleging Ross Daley and his company Veritate Pty Ltd engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act.

Resources

Good as gold

Explorer Southern Gold says indications are good for a large gold discovery at its prospect in South Australia's far west. The company has found a gold-in-calcrete anomaly at its wholly-owned Nemesis prospect, directly north of the producing Challenger gold mine, that is one kilometre long and 400 metres wide. Shares in the company rose after the announcement and closed up 2c, or 21 per cent, to 11.5c.