The battle for the federal seat of Bennelong has taken the spotlight from its former incumbent, ex ABC star Maxine McKew, and her sunny new career.
McKew, who famously knocked off John Howard as the member for Bennelong in the Kevin07 election, has surfaced this week as a non executive director for New Energy Solar, which invests in large scale solar power plants.
The renewable energy investor emerged as one of the largest initial public offerings this year having raised more than $200 million at $1.50 a share.
It listed last week and has managed to keep its head above the $1.50 a share paid by new investors like McKew who picked up 66,666 units in the float plus options to buy more.
New's main focus is on opportunities in the US and Australian markets, but given the farcical energy policy in Australia most of its funds have gone to into US assets.
And given the Labor links, is it any wonder that the prospectus was cautious, to say the least, about Malcolm Turnbull's ingenious National Electricity Guarantee (NEG) scheme.
"While many of the details of the NEG are still to be defined, it is anticipated that it will support the ongoing development of renewable energy generation."
Her chairman is public service veteran Jeffrey Whalan whose last government post was running Centrelink.
Also on the board are Alan Dixon of Evans Dixon and UBS veteran John Holland.
And with the float successfully executed, the board will be dealing with another pressing matter, their pay.Currently the non-executive directors like McKew get $50,000 a year including super, while chairman Whalan scores $75,000.The plan is to hit up their fellow shareholders at the 2018 annual meeting to increase the current cap on directors' pay from $200,000 a year to $400,000 a year "to enable payment of commercial arms-length directors' fees and to allow for expansion of the board if necessary."
Gender balance
In other news, the ASX has gained another female CEO, with Rebecca Lowde now appointed to the top job on a permanent basis after Craig Dower's departure in May this year "by mutual agreement".
He walked out with a $784,000 termination benefit, and a $812,000 annual salary that will not be available for his replacement.
Salmat said Lowde's contract terms "remain unchanged from those detailed in the 2017 Annual Report". Which means Lowde's salary remains at $649,000 a year plus incentives.
Not helping Lowde's cause for a higher pay packet is the fact that the company's revenues are still shrinking, and at the current share price the whole business has a market value of just $90 million.
Game on
Some would say, the best money made from mergers and acquisitions is by those acquiring the assets that need to be discarded by the merging parties. Does that mean the champagne corks are popping at Farrell Family-owned Tasmanian gambling operator, the Federal Group?
It is picking up Tabcorp's Queensland-based poker machine monitoring business, Odyssey Gaming Services. Maybe not given the Farrell's are scrambling to preserve their 40 year old poker machine monopoly in Tasmania beyond 2023, amid a state election which has finally focused on grubby industry.
Like Tatts and Tabcorp in 2012, Federal might lost its pokie monopoly with the licences handed back to the pubs and hotels which house the machines.
A recent gambling inquiry decided against banning pokies but did recommend that the number of machines should be reduced and a change to the model which has allowed the Farrell's to controversially control every machine in Tassie without so much as a whiff of competition.
For those who are interested, Tasmanian historian and anti poker machine campaigner, James Boyce - wrote a book about how the Farrells were gifted the monopoly that delivered a $450 million fortune - aptly titled Losing Streak.
"With the introduction of poker machines, Federal's annual profits went from $600,000 in 1993 to $29 million in 2003. Little of the revenue goes to pubs or clubs or finds its way into government coffers."
The Odyssey business will be a nice fallback position for the Farrells, who also own Tasmania's two casinos.
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