Executive Summary: Monday February 08, 2010
By Scott Rochfort | smh.com.au | 08 February
Trevor Rowe ... looking at an initial public offer for Pie Face later this year. Cartoon: John Shakespeare.
BrisConnections chairman and Rothschild bigwig Trevor Rowe is eyeing another sharemarket listing. This time in the takeaway coffee and meat pie business.
Rowe is a key shareholder in the Surry Hills-based franchisor Pie Face, which has started putting the feelers out for a potential initial public offer later this year.
It is unclear if it will be listed in three instalments, as BrisConnections was.
Pie Face was established by the former Citigroup operative Wayne Homschek and his partner, Betty Fong, in 2003.
Other people to have a piece of the pie company include Pacific Equity's managing director, Paul McCullagh, Fat Prophets' founder, Angus Geddes, the retailing, bridge-climbing and bra expert Brett Blundy, investment banker Matthew Howison, former ABN Amro Rothschild investment banking boss and Corpac founder Robert Crossman, Japanese-speaking fund manager Warwick Johnson and a former Citigroup media analyst, George Colman.
Homschek has also recruited Ben Macpherson (brother of Elle) as a shareholder and his chief marketing officer. The two were ousted from the board of the loss-making listed talent agency Artist & Entertainment Group, of which Macpherson used to be chief executive.
Shares in the talent agency, which has since shifted its focus to coalmining, have been diluted more than 10 times since their 2004 listing. They have also fallen more than 90 per cent. But the buzz from the Pie Face camp is all positive.
"Feedback from potential franchisees has been extremely encouraging. They like our business model and excellent economics. They like the way we operate in a very transparent way.
But most of all they believe in our food, product and service offering," Pie Face's chief executive, Homschek, said in a recent statement.
The pie firm also seems to be positioning itself in the metrosexual pie-eating segment, noting it already has a "cult reputation" for its "cool" and "edgy" brand.
It will be interesting to see how the market responds to a US-born entrepreneur's attempts to crack into a traditional Australian food segment.
Offbeat links
Has the federal opposition leader, Tony Abbott, subconsciously borrowed the term for its climate change policy from the far left of the political spectrum?
Direct Action is also the name of the publication of the Karl Marx-loving Revolutionary Socialist Party in Australia.
"Capitalism has 'united' the world, but as a global imperialist system in which a minority of rich, developed nations exploit the rest of the world's nations through the 'normal' working of the capitalist world market," reasons the political party on its website.
The latest issue of the Direct Action newspaper has some feelgood pieces including one on how the US is trying to turn Haiti into a "compliant neo-colony for US investment".
Maybe Abbott would be more comforted to know that his new climate change policy shares its name with an 2004 action film featuring the Rocky IV star Dolph Lundgren.
The "suspense action drama" centres on the highly decorated police sergeant Frank Gannon (Lundgren), who serves in the Los Angeles Police Department's Direct Action Unit.
Gannon is hunted down by some of his work colleagues when he agrees to testify at a federal grand jury about the dirty deeds conducted within the unit.
Waterlogged
The former Patrick managing director Chris Corrigan has talked down the chances of making a rockstar comeback to the waterfront.
Despite rumours last year Corrigan could lead a possible buy-out of Patrick's new owner Asciano in partnership with the private equity group Carlyle, his days of butting heads with the competition tsar Graeme Samuel and union officials seem well and truly over.
It seems he is more interested in a backseat role these days.
"I'm retirement age almost so I think it's a bit late to start again for me. But I'm interested in seeing some of these ideas come to fruition but there are more talented and more energetic people," the 63-year-old said on Friday.
One of these energetic people is believed to be Maurice James, the former head of Patrick's ports business and now deputy chairman of Corrigan's new hobbyhorse, Kaplan Funds Management.
Corrigan returns to London at the end of the month. Asked what was the drawcard in London, the Crown director said: "Late-life crisis."
Timely exit
The Webjet chief executive David Clarke offloaded another chunk of his holdings in the online travel retailer.
On Friday, the company disclosed Clarke had offloaded 100,000 shares at about $2.38, just shy of the $2.48 high the company hit last week.
And fortunately just before Friday's sharemarket rout Clarke is now left with 15,443 shares in the company he runs. Last October, Clarke made about $420,000 after exercising 570,000 options.
First published by Smh.com.au on February 08 2010
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