Illustration: John Shakespeare
The Liberal Party candidate who lost the byelection of John Brogden's vacated seat of Pittwater in 2005 and failed to take the electorate of Ryde in the 2003 state election has been given the chance to campaign for another seat.
This time, all the executive chairman of the NSW Liberal Party's Millennium Forum fund-raising arm, Paul Nicolaou, needs to do is win over the shareholders in the Wallace Absolute Return (aka No Return) Fund.
Yesterday the managing director of the Sydney investment firm Sandon Capital, Gabriel Radzyminski, lobbed a request for the Wallace No Return Fund to call a shareholder meeting to have himself and Nicolaou installed as directors.
Sandon is also asking for shareholders to dump Wallace's managing director, Michael Birch, and his fellow director Alan Liddle as directors. Does Nicolaou have a chance? Absolutely.
The Wallace Absolutely Stuffed Fund has now racked up more than $85 million of losses, its share price has fallen 96 per cent and its funds under management have dwindled to $4 million.
The fund has launched legal action against its deposed founder, Richard Wallace, alleging he had breached his directors duties.
Radzyminski's Sandon Capital and another of its associates recently built a 12 per cent stake in the Where's Wallace Speculative Fund.
It is unclear whether the Sandon team will play up Nicolaou's political strengths. Nicolaou has sat on the board of flower and chocolate distributor Roses Only since 2003.
FEE'S A CROWD
JPMorgan has a no-fuss way of describing clients who complain about excessive advisory fees. When the NSW Supreme Court yesterday threw out the bank's claim for $50.8 million in fees from the 2007 takeover for Consolidated Minerals, JPMorgan had to settle on a $20 million fee.
The judgment said JPMorgan sent the initial $32 million ''defence response fee'' to Cons Min, where the miner's company secretary, John Abbott, was taken aback. Rather than make too much of a fuss, the JPMorgan deal maker Jonathan Gidney sent an email to his then boss, Andrew Pridham, where he described Abbott's reaction as just a ''[b]it of sticker shock''.
In his ruling yesterday, Justice David Hammerschlag said: ''This, I am given to believe, is an expression intended to describe the shock of a would-be purchaser at a price on a sticker showing the price of goods for sale (presumably because it is too high).'' Hammerschlag also recounted the time when Cons Min appointed JPMorgan as an adviser. ''By the middle of 2006, it seems it had a premonition that it might become a takeover target.''
DO IT YOURSELF
The Ukrainian owner of Palmary, Gennadiy Bogolyubov, does not seem to put too much value on advisers doing things on his behalf. This is despite Palmary having hired the services of UBS for its bid for Cons Min.
The website of the billionaire's charity - the Bogolyubov Foundation - notes how it strictly adheres to the Hebrew phrase of L'Taken Olam.
''Literally translated, this means to partner G-d [sic] in perfecting the world. In practice, to us, this means leading by example rather than relying on others to act first,'' the website says.
One of the foundation's projects includes the construction of a Jewish community centre in Bogolyubov's home city of Dnepropetrovsk.
It also funds Jewish family celebrations such as bar mitzvahs, marriages and births around the world, and is helping restore parts of Jerusalem's Western Wall.
LOAN RANGER
The former HIH deputy chief executive George Osvald Sturesteps and his wife Beryl could soon expect a knock on the door.
The NSW Supreme Court has ruled the couple are obligated to repay a $200,000 loan - plus interest - from HIH that was used to fund Beryl's purchase of an apartment in downtown San Francisco in 1987. In 1994, HIH paid George a $300,000 bonus to help fund the purchase of a replacement apartment.
The original unit was sold for $226,000 but the loan was never repaid. Justice Paul Brereton, however, did propose that George, who stayed with the sinking HIH until the end, was entitled to $369,279.98 in long service leave payments. ''Particularly where questions of impression, opinion, conclusions or his state of mind are concerned, I conclude that one must treat very carefully and cautiously with Mr Sturesteps' evidence,'' Justice Brereton's judgment said.
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