SINCE its float last year, BrisConnections has survived the investments of Melbourne housewife Fang He and rebel shareholder Nicholas Bolton. It has endured the meddling of Alan Bond's old bankruptcy adviser, Jim Byrnes, and written off more than $100 million of debt owed by the company's own investors.
The company's shares, floated at $3 apiece, now trade at just 10ยข each, with a further $1 instalment to pay. On Friday, the company announced it was suspending all previously promised distributions to shareholders, until further notice.
It's quite a roll-call, but for those who don't think BrisConnections is the most disastrous float in Australian corporate history, add another one to the list. The company building Brisbane's Airport Link toll road is using a haulage subcontractor with links to a West Australian bikie gang to work on the $5.6 billion project.
Construction giant Thiess John Holland, a subsidiary of Leighton Holdings, is the actual builder of Airport Link, but it uses a range of subcontractors to get the work done.
One of those subcontractors is haulage company Effective Transport, which is co-owned by managing director Neil McGill, a senior member of the Club Deroes outlaw bikie gang.
Effective Transport was awarded a contract to work on another Leighton Holdings construction project, the $700 million Perth Bunbury Highway.
Work given to Effective Transport led to a state government inquiry into the deal.
In turn, Effective Transport subcontracted work out to another haulage company called Armour Haulage, formerly called Outlaw Constructions, on the Perth Bunbury Highway project.
Victorian-based Armour Haulage was owned by Geoffrey Armour, who has been charged with the murder of underworld figure Des ''Tuppence'' Moran.
Armour Haulage collapsed in May this year with almost $1 million of debts, and Grant Thornton has been appointed liquidator of the company's assets.
Of course, BrisConnections has no control over which subcontractors are used by Thiess John Holland, but news that a company with links to a notorious outlaw bikie gang is working on its road aren't the sort of headlines the company needs after its annus horribilis.
BrisConnections has embarked on a national advertising campaign to push the message that the ''Airport Link, Australia's largest privately funded infrastructure project, is on track''.
This Saturday, the company will also host a tour of the project for investors, so they can see the result of 4.5 million hours of work, costing $1.25 billion so far.
The headlines are also bad news for the Bligh Government in Queensland, which is trying to pass anti-bikie legislation similar to that of South Australia.
Gong for Sage
IT HAS been a big year for Cape Lambert Iron Ore boss and Perth Glory A-League club owner Tony Sage.
After Cape Lambert sold its namesake iron ore project in the Pilbara to China Metallurgical for $400 million at the peak of the resources boom, including $320 million of cash, Sage had to fight off a number of sharks circling his company.
Those circling included Evraz, controlled by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who just happens to own a slightly bigger football team than Sage, called Chelsea FC.
Others with an interest in Cape Lambert included Mick ''Manynames'' Shemesian, through his Hong Kong company Power United. Shemesian tried to have Melbourne day trader Leo ''The Gun'' Khouri appointed to the Cape Lambert board.
In the end, Sage won the day.
But only after Mick Gatto and business associate John Khoury, under the banner of Arbitrations and Mediations, flew to London for a secret meeting at The Mayfair hotel to help broker a peace deal between the warring parties.
Sage has been rewarded for all that hard work, picking up a gong as Resourcestocks magazine executive of the year award for 2009.
Sage accepted the award in Perth last week, and was applauded for his job taking Cape Lambert from a small-cap explorer called International Goldfields to one of the top 300 companies on the Australian Securities Exchange.
And for fighting off all those sharks.
The judges noted that Cape Lambert had returned $100 million to shareholders, and bought a number of former CopperCo assets, including the Lady Annie copper mine in Queensland.
Last week Cape Lambert lodged its prospectus for the $214 million float of a spin-off called Q Copper, which contains the Lady Annie mine.
It's due to hit the boards by the end of the year.
Sage beat Jake Klein of Sino Gold Mining and Robert Hosking of Karoon Gas Australia for the award.
