By Scott Rochfort
The perma-tanned rag-trader Solomon Lew has apparently reached an understanding with a fellow billionaire, Wendy McCaw, over a parking bingle in a Florida yacht yard.
Back in February, Lew's 54-metre megayacht Maridome clouted McCaw's even larger floating palace, the 57-metre Calixe, as the Calixe lay in its berth in the BAE Systems shipyard in Jacksonville.
Er, yeah, g'day … Chris Luxon may be a Kiwi but he's no Dagg. Illustration: John Shakespeare
After talks on who should pay the bill failed, McCaw sued everyone and everything involved, including Lew.
Lawsuits are apparently something of an occupational hazard for Lew, who was at the same time bogged down in a bitter legal stoush over a family trust fund that reached its climax when his lawyers complained to the Victorian Supreme Court that he had been portrayed by the media as a ''greedy ogre'' in coverage of the case.
Happily, late last month McCaw decided to release Lew from the lawsuit. However, action against the company that owns the Maridome and the yacht itself remains on foot.
In legal papers filed last month, the inanimate object said it admitted hitting the Calixe but was ''without sufficient knowledge to either admit or deny the extent of damage to Calixe's hull, equipment and paint''.
Maridome denied that it ''violently struck'' Calixe, saying it was ''moving at slow speeds'' at the time.
However, it still did enough damage that its insurer had to lodge a $US620,000 bond with the court to get it released from chokey.
KIWI FLIES
The years spent as a Unilever executive in Australia, Britain and Canada appear to have done little to diminish the thick Kiwi accent of Air New Zealand's incoming chief executive, Christopher Luxon. Or his use of key Kiwi expressions such as ''awesome''.
''It is a rully, rully special company. The bust airline in the world and, I thunk, the bust company in New Zulund. We have an awesome responsibility,'' he said. He later added: ''I'm rully proud of thus company. It is an awesome company.''
Luxon, 41, also talked about the ''relationship I want to build across New Zulund Inc'' and how Air New Zealanders ''represent the bust of our country''.
The Christchurch-born Luxon will take over at the end of the year from Rob Fyfe. The airline also sought to clarify some Chinese whispers that emanated from Fyfe's farewell bash on the sidelines of last week's annual global airline industry gabfest in Beijing.
Apparently it was not Fyfe who handed out gift pairs of undies at his party. An Air NZ source confirmed that guests at Fyfe's party, including Etihad's Australian boss, James Hogan, and Cathay Pacific's John Slosar, actually ''created some and gifted him a pair''.
AXE ATTACK
Luxon has big shoes to fill, given Fyfe's reputation. For a start, Fyfe is believed to be the first airline chief executive to ever appear naked (in body paint) in a TV commercial.
But it is good to see he has some runs on the titillation scoreboard. Luxon attracted some heat in 2010 as the chief executive of Unilever in Canada, after the consumer goods company ran a series of controversial adverts for its Axe spray-on deodorant (known here as Lynx. The ads attracted the scorn of feminist groups for their allegedly demeaning portrayal of women in a range of promotions for the deodorant that gives ''guys the edge in the mating game in more than 60 countries''.
One of the offending ads showed hordes of scantily clad women (with a poor choice of bra support) running towards a man spraying Axe on himself, to the other of a woman polishing some sports balls.
In his response to the criticism (which was posted on one blog website), Luxon explained: ''What unites all the products in the Unilever portfolio is our Vitality mission, which seeks to promote products that help our consumers look good, feel good, and get more out of life.
''The Axe campaign is a spoof, of the 'mating game' and men's desire to get noticed by women, and not meant to be taken literally,'' he said.
COOL ON CHANGE
The urgent passing of some amendments to a certain piece of legislation by the federal Labor government on Monday night has provoked a feisty response from the chief executive of the Australian Shareholders Association.
The ASA's Vas Kolesnikoff yesterday said ''shareholder rights were retarded a decade by Canberra'' after the passing of legislation that will allow company chairmen to vote undirected proxies on the remuneration-related resolutions at annual meetings.
He said the changes could help company boards, which had a large vote at their remuneration reports last year, survive a ''second strike'' at their next annual meeting.
''This amendment will provide greater certainty by removing any doubt or confusion in relation to shareholder voting on executive pay and will strengthen the government's remuneration reforms," said the parliamentary secretary to the treasurer, Bernie Ripoll, in a statement.
Chartered Secretaries Australia, which lobbied for the change in the law, argued ''the chair is unable to vote undirected proxies in the non-binding remuneration vote, even where the shareholder has expressed confidence in the chair by appointing him or her as their proxy to vote on their behalf''.
But Kolesnikoff is not so convinced. ''Is there a brain in Canberra?'' he asked in an email yesterday. ''What a joke!'' The ASA has now launched a campaign for shareholders to appoint it as their proxy this annual meeting season.
Got a tip? srochfort@fairfax.com.au