Marketing Stays In The Blood
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday December 4, 2003
Names just crop up for Christine Lacy.
Job offers might have dried up for Rocket Rod Adler's old best mate Brad Cooper, who's kept something of a low profile since the royal commission, but not so for his one-time right-hand marketing girl, Melinda Reiter.
Reiter's company, Delos Holdings, jointly owned with husband Jason Foote, made a motza peddling Brad's FAI Home Security alarm systems in Melbourne. These days Reiter goes by the name of Melinda Foote.
She was so good at rolling the systems down the line and then offloading the debts to an outfit called FAI Finance (then owned by FAI, but now owned by the Hanover Group) to collect that she helped Brad sell more than 100,000 units at $2000-a-pop, plus a generous rate of interest.
Shame he had to give some of that back to 500 customers as a settlement, after it was claimed in the Federal Court that Cooper's home security company's hard-selling marketing agents had misled consumers.
Property guru Henry Kaye, meanwhile, was dreaming up his own home security ideas to flog to the masses, such as ineffectual deposit bonds.
He sold Reiter an apartment in 2000 and offered her a job.
Reiter and Kaye's sister, Julia Kukuy, set up Kaye's marketing arm, Novasource, and the guru's investment strategies were soon walking out the door.
It's history now how the guru came off his high this year, and how his sister and Reiter sued Kaye and at the same time started their own property investment company, Bridgepoint.
But for the finance company used by Kaye, the Hanover Group (through its other subsidiary Australian Finance Direct), it's raining money just like the Brad Cooper glory days.
It's hounding Kaye's clients for monies due but, unsurprisingly, isn't talking very much.
As for Bridgepoint, it failed to open the doors to its planned seminar in Parramatta on Tuesday night after receiving praise from this journal for keeping Kaye's aphorisms alive. The company says its presenter failed to make the plane from Melbourne because he had a sore behind.
Aristocrat sans palace
For new pokies boss Paul Oneile, it'll be a case of home is wherever he lays his hat on his next visit to gambling epicentre Las Vegas.
His predecessor, Dessie Randall, was handed a $2.6 million interest-only loan to secure digs in Nevada, on top of the $4.1 million pad the company bought him at home in Balmoral.
The Sydney pad has been sold for $4.75 million and Oneile has to make do with his own more modest $550,000 Paddo digs.
And now the pokie maker has managed to offload the Nevada executive base too. Randall, on his inglorious departure, handed back the US base to the company as settlement of the loan. A stunning hand pass of downside risk if we ever saw one.
But it's worked out OK for everyone (except Oneile, who'll have to settle for a hotel room as home in the gambling capital). Aristocrat got $US1.75 million for the Nevada pad and is believed to have made a small profit on the whole deal.
Insert coins now
One.Tel chair John Greaves clearly had no mind to save his pennies for a rainy day.
Suddenly it's persisting down and the one-time John Fairfax and Sol 6 number-cruncher finds himself short of threepence.
At least that's what he's telling the Supreme Court.
In seeking to have heard at the one time myriad court actions relating to the telco's collapse concerning Greaves and fellow directors Jodee Rich and Mark Silbermann, the chairman has cried poor in the whole affair.
Buried deep within the judgement yesterday by Justice Patricia ``Paddy" Bergin, who's declared three matters relating to the clawback of bonuses, alleged breach of directors' duties and payout on director's indemnity insurance should be heard at the same time, is ``confidential evidence in relation to Greaves' financial position".
He has ``net assets of $700,000 to $750,000", with the estimated cost of preparing for the case brought by ASIC ``conservatively" estimated at between $1.5 million and $1.7 million. It will be a lean (and busy) new year.
Park outlook
Put Amcor spin-off PaperlinX on takeover watch. Tom Park is moving into the top office.
Having presided over the reverse gulp of Southcorp by Bob Oatley and crumbled under the financial weight of Graeme Hart's Burns Philp at the helm of Goodies, the US-born exec is back after eight months in the wilderness.
The former lieutenant in the US Navy and Vietnam vet, who's had some trouble holding down a gig for the past three years, will fill Ian Wightwick's shoes from February.
Chair David Meiklejohn long-time number cruncher under Stan Wallis at Amcor might want to encourage some provisioning on the salaries front, with Park an expensive kind of guy.
When he left Philip Morris's Kraft in February 2000 to join the winemaker on a five-year contract, he got $3.8 million in compensation for surrendered options. Five months later he was out the same door, replaced by Oatley's son-in-law Keith Lambert (who didn't last long either). Park's compensation? A $3 million severance cheque.
So to Goodies, where after just 18 months the axe fell. Park's compensation? A $2.5 million severance cheque.
Never mind that, with PaperlinX yesterday glossing right over the 56-year-old's track record. ``He left Kraft . . . to join Southcorp and over recent years has held the positions of MD and CEO of Southcorp and CEO of Goodman Fielder," its statement said. Two lines for the $9.3 million he earned from the merry-go-round in three years.
Now Park's getting a leg-up on the front too. Wightwick got $1.95 million in 2003, which compares with $1.54 million to Park at Goodies for his only full year's work for a while.
Idolising Ten
It may not have been the Concert Hall and Nick Falloon wasn't belting out River Deep, Mountain High, but the adoration was thick at the annual gathering of Ten punters at the Star City gambling den at Pyrmont yesterday.
Falloon's AGM went for just on 35 minutes, with just one question from the floor as directors including John Studdy and Hungry Jack Cowin were re-elected to the board.
A briefing for the press took longer, with television chief executive John McAlpine brushing off suggestions the appointment of Kerry Kingston as chief operator was a succession plan.
Across Cockle Bay at glitzy but controversial eatery Coco Roco it seems Australian Idol host Andrew G, on deck to gab on about Foxtel's ``hot" summer line-up, spent just a little too much time discussing his old hit show rather than the pay TV outfit, to the discomfort of assembled execs.
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald