Executive Summary: December 09, 2009
By Scott Rochfort | smh.com.au | 08 December
Westpac has continued to arouse suspicions that there could be a leak of happy gas in its Sydney headquarters, going by a presentation given to analysts yesterday.
Just days after copping a beating from the federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, for jacking up interest rates above the Reserve Bank's official lift, the Westpac chief executive, Gail Kelly, noted how ''delighted'' she was. ''It's about listening to customers,'' beamed Kelly, who again trotted out her observations that we were living in a New Normal. ''It's about being visible … being there for our customers.''
Westpac's outgoing transformation chief and incoming head of its BT Financial Group subsidiary, Brad Cooper, was ecstatic.
''It is absolutely fantastic to be here,'' he said.''[It's] just not about customer focus. It's about customer centricity.'' Cooper became especially excited on slide 20 of the presentation, which showed the ''overlap'' between Westpac and its offshoot, St George Bank.
The head of retail banking, Peter Hanlon, who was shunted aside yesterday into a new role as the head for people and transformation, also showed no signs of Mondayitis. ''It's great to be here,'' he said. ''Our business is to delight our customers. It's how our people work together for the customer as one team … We think we have really hit the nail on the head.''
He also relayed some feedback received from regional NSW: ''Westpac is the happening bank in Moree.''
WAXING LYRICAL
Hanlon also provided some lyrics that could be worthy of a Leonard Cohen song: ''No one likes to pay higher prices. But I think we are in this New Normal and people don't quite know where those prices are going to settle; I don't quite know exactly where the New Normal will settle in terms of sensitivities.''
Hanlon's role will be filled by the outgoing BT boss, Rob Coombe.
BROWN TO PAY
The real estate player whose Balmoral house was allegedly firebombed by Michael McGurk has been ordered to pay more than $5 million after losing a legal fight with his former business partners. Justin Brown, the chairman of the residential division of CB Richard Ellis, lost his appeal yesterday in a dispute over a handwritten agreement regarding $1.5 million worth of property deals drawn up over ''a number of schooners'' in the Lord Dudley Hotel, Paddington.
Brown is going to have to pay Daniel Hausman and Lance Hodgkinson more than $5 million because he has been ordered to cover indemnity costs, which includes the holding costs of the properties over the past two years while the case was before the courts.
Brown was named as the successful bidder for McGurk's investment property-cum-criminal headquarters in leafy Cremorne last month.He reportedly paid $1.4 million for the dilapidated three-bedroom house.
RIVETING TWEET
Latest update from James Hardie's Twitter page: ''For loose siding quick-fixes, re-nail a properly sized corrosion-resistant fastener.''
DUBAI PONDERS
The ruler of Dubai has provided more words of wisdom for his subjects to ponder as the debt-laden emirate continues to buckle. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has updated some of the quotes on his website to now include: ''The economic slowdown has given us time to pause, contemplate and study the things around us.''; and ''Those who believed that Dubai's economy and success were based solely on the real estate sector were pointedly wrong.'' He continued: ''From crises emerge men determined to succeed''; ''Money is like water, block its flow and it will stagnate.'' The budding poet also posed this thought: ''If poetry fails to express the nation's wishes, dreams, hopes and pains, it has no value. Poetry contributed to the progress of the UAE.''
NOT A DONE DEAL
CBD was a tad off the mark in its item on Lend Lease Primelife yesterday in suggesting Lend Lease's proposed scheme of arrangement to take over the old people's home operator for 35 cents a security looked like a ''done deal'', given Lend Lease already owned 43 per cent of Primelife.
Lend Lease cannot vote on its stake, meaning the deal will need the support of the mainly retail shareholder base of the Babcock & Brown listed fund. Lend Lease will hold a meeting to vote on the resolution on Monday. Despite seeming upbeat about the debt-laden fund's prospects in its annual report, the Primelife chairman, Andrew Love , has warned that security-holders could be called to cough up more equity unless they support the deal.
Primelife has said that aside from having to repay $110 million of debt in June, it might have to raise at least $300 million to reduce the gearing on its balance sheet.
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First published by Smh.com.au on December 08 2009
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