Executive Summary: December 11, 2009
By Scott Rochfort | smh.com.au | 11 December
The octogenarian media mogul Bruce Gordon appears to have put his money on the Channel Ten horse beating the private equity-controlled Channel ''No longer the one'' Nine.
Gordon, who has a foot in both camps with his 12 per cent stake in Ten and his ownership of a Nine regional affiliate, WIN TV, provided an upbeat assessment of the third-placed idiot box network yesterday.
''It is going to have a very successful year and, with the return of advertising dollars coming back into the market, we shall see the share price improve,'' Gordon said, from the floor of Ten's annual meeting.
Gordon also seems content not to press for a board seat at Ten. ''We might ask for an independent director to keep us informed. But I can assure that Channel Ten gets more support from our company … than does Channel Nine.''
Ten's last remaining Canadian-born director, Jack ''Hungry'' Cowin, meanwhile, rebuffed concerns over a potential conflict of interest from his KFC, Domino's and Hungry Jack food interests advertising on the network.
''The only thing that I would like to do is pay less for the advertising, and I have not been successful in achieving that,'' he told shareholders.
SMOOTHIE TALK
A Reserve Bank assistant governor, Guy Debelle, gave a really complicated address to the Westpac Research and Strategy Forum yesterday about the foreign exchange market.
The average banana smoothie-drinking Westpac home loan borrower would have been lost listening to Debelle, who touched on several issues, including the recovery of the Australian dollar.
The host, Westpac, did not even provide a translation of Debelle's speech. It was left up to this column to decipher it.
In one part of the speech, Debelle (aka B2) said: ''With market conditions normalising, the bank has therefore taken the opportunity to replenish the foreign reserves that were deployed during this episode.''
Debelle meant to say the Reserve Banana of Australia had started to buy more foreign bananas.
In another technical bit the central banker said: ''Heightened risk aversion contributed to the depreciation of the Australian dollar last year.'' In other words, people who were worried about their own stockpiles of bananas lost their appetite for Australian bananas. Debelle did not touch on the fact that new bananas are nice eaten fresh, but old bananas are better mushed into a smoothie. Or even bundled (aka securitised) with flour and eggs and baked into muffins - and then sold to home loan borrowers.
TOP BANANA
Earlier this week the Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens (aka B1), gave an equally complicated talk on the origins of the financial crisis. ''Capital held against complex structured products in particular was seriously insufficient,'' said Stevens. What Stevens was trying to say was there were not enough bananas held in reserve in case other bananas in the market ripened too quickly. ''I am personally not persuaded of the intellectual basis of a simple overall leverage ratio,'' Stevens said. The message he was trying to convey here was you have to keep a good eye on how many bananas you have in stock.
FOREIGN REVIEWS
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has beefed up the number of people who decide whether the Chinese Government should be allowed to hoover up more Australian companies.
Yesterday Swan appointed the ex-Deutsche banker and Magellan Financial founder Hamish Douglass to the Foreign Investment Review Board, along with the former Lazard boss, Brian Wilson.
The board also includes the chairman of the majority Australian-owned fashion powerhouse Noni B, Lynn Wood, former Reserve Bank deputy governor John Phillips and ex-Liberal politician Chris Miles.
Swan said he would also give foreign predators (aka the Chinese Government) a better understanding of how FIRB functions. ''Early in 2010 the board will release an easy-to-read version of the foreign investment review framework for prospective investors, which will be made available in other languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Bahasa,'' he said. Sadly, there will be no booklet comparing foreign investment to banana smoothies.
RIO SPECIALTY
Rio Tinto's board appears to have a lot of people who know something about infrastructure. Rod Eddington was appointed by Kevin Rudd last year as the chairman of Infrastructure Australia, the body that will advise the Government on where it should direct its infrastructure funding. Now the former Rio Tinto chairman Paul Skinner has been appointed by the British Government as chairman of Infrastructure UK. It is not clear if Eddington was a job referee for Skinner, given he penned a transport study for the Blair government in 2006.
ARENA MAN
Meanwhile, there was a strange coincidence involving another Rio director who has expertise in the infrastructure arena. The Murdoch media whipped sports-mad Melbourne into a frenzy over its report that Sydney's ANZ Stadium was planning a $150 million upgrade that would put a roof over the ground.
''Melbourne's standing as nation's sporting capital under threat,'' warned yesterday's Herald Sun. The news came just after the AFL code said it would block any potential World Cup hosted by Australia in 2018 or 2022 from using Melbourne's Docklands stadium.
The Herald Sun hit back with an poll on whether a roof should be put on the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the main AFL stadium. By yesterday afternoon about one-third of those voting wanted a roof.
Coincidentally, the AFL chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick, also chairs and part-owns the manager of ANZ Stadium, Infrastructure Capital Group.
JOB HOAX
Meanwhile, beware of people offering jobs at Rio. The miner has warned of hoax newspaper ads where applicants are duped into thinking they are vying for a highly paid job in the west.
They ''were taken through a false recruitment process … and were asked to make an upfront payment to cover airfares and other expenses'', warned the miner.
UGLY MOMENT
Even the UGL Ltd chief executive is having problems adjusting to his company's new name. ''Hello, it's Richard Leupen from United Group … um, er … actually I'm from UGL,'' said the chief UGLy when he called back the Herald yesterday.
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First published by Smh.com.au on December 11 2009
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