It pays to take salary tips from the B&B gang

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This was published 11 years ago

It pays to take salary tips from the B&B gang

By Scott Rochfort

WHAT better outfit to offer remuneration advice than the advisory firm run by several executives from the collapsed investment group Babcock & Brown?

The Trevor Loewensohn-founded Alceon Group, which includes former Babcock & Brown chief executive Phil Green as a consultant, notes on its website services ranging from ''comprehensive capital structuring'', ''placements and rights issues'' and ''effective corporate communication and investor relations'' to ''takeovers and demergers''.

Illustration: Shakespeare

Illustration: Shakespeare

But it seems only logical that Alceon should offer remuneration advice, given some of its operatives gained a reputation for their pay packets while working at Babcock & Brown.

Property outfit Charter Hall Group, chaired by the former director of several Babcock & Brown-related entities Kerry Roxburgh, appears to have acknowledged this expertise.

In its annual report, Charter Hall notes how Alceon was one of the consultants to provide advice to its remuneration and human resources committee.

For the year to June 30, 2011, Charter Hall's joint managing directors David Southon and David Harrison each saw their base salaries jump 40 per cent to $1.03 million.

In his last full year at Babcock & Brown as chief executive, 2007, Green received $22 million remuneration.

Quoin trades up

DO THE ambitions of the ASX's second-longest suspended stock know any bounds?

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Quoin Ltd, which has been suspended since April 2001, last week announced its plans to become a big player in the Australian real estate market.

The former Papua New Guinean hotel operator - which has already announced plans to take on Facebook with its social website called RingBuzzer - has now ''entered into an agreement'' to buy the Australian franchising rights for the US real estate brand Coldwell Banker.

''The company plans to expand the existing Australian business of the brand and become a major participant in the Australian residential and commercial real estate market,'' Quoin said in a statement.

The announcement came just three weeks after Coldwell Banker's parent company filed for a $1 billion initial public offering in the US.

The Coldwell Banker Australia website notes that it has already been acquired by Quoin ''subject to shareholders' approval''.

It is more than a year since Quoin signalled its move into the social media arena by issuing one of the most unintelligible ASX announcements of all time.

The company statement said: ''Through ongoing normal social networking activity users will self migrate to a virtual vortex of relevance which results in the user participating in more of specifically what they target, thereby yielding a greater opportunity and capacity to monetise social networking sites and simultaneously making the sites more useful.''

A juicy update

MEANWHILE, China JXY Group, the ASX's longest suspended stock, this week reported on its ''great progress on the development of a revolutionary juice''. The tinned asparagus and PVC glove-making powerhouse described its new juice in its annual report: ''Its taste is fantastic and beyond imagination. Its colour looks like beer.''

China JXY, which has been suspended from trading since May 1998, added: ''The management strongly believes that this asparagus juice will be warm [sic] welcome by the Chinese domestic market and will become the core product of the company in the short future because of its beautiful taste and health concept/function as well as the huge size of the Chinese domestic market.''

China JXY is 89.8 per cent owned by the family of executive chairman Delin Sun, who back-door-listed it into the shell of the company formerly known as China Cattle and Sunbase China in 2009.

China JXY also expressed confidence in the $16 million investment in a food science and technology park. ''The board of the company believes that the investment will significantly drive [the] asparagus industry to a higher level [of] development: with the establishment [of the] China National Asparagus Technology Research Centre,'' said China JXY, which reported a $21.2 million profit for 2011.

''It would provide a strong technological back-up to push [the] asparagus industry move forward, meanwhile it also [will] enhance the company reputation with China and across the world.''

Got a tip? srochfort@fairfax.com.au

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