Feud for thought: Kate Askew connects Telstra to a dynastic stink in Honkers.
Hamburger Bob Mansfield and Telstra's top telephonist Ziggy Switowski no doubt spent the weekend trying to figure out just where they now stand with the Li family as a drama of Shakespearean proportions unfolds.
Late last week Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing once again rode to the rescue of his errant son Richard. But despite comments just three weeks ago that he would not invest in his son's company, Li senior will end up with a tiny 0.8 per cent stake in the battered Pacific Century CyberWorks.
It seems like only last October that Telstra pumped in $US2 billion in cash and signed off on another $US2 billion debt raising in a joint venture with Richard's PCCW to help him pay for the takeover of HongKong Telecom.
That money should have helped Richard finally square up against the old man, with whom he has had a less than amicable relationship.
The good news for Telstra is Li senior's move should help shore up the ailing PCCW share price, particularly with Cable and Wireless - the former HK Telecom owners - still looking to offload a 15 per cent stake. The short odds now are on the old man's cashed-up Hutchison Whampoa as a buyer.
The problem for Bob and Ziggy is that their deal with Richard thrust Telstra into direct competition with Li senior in the cut throat mobile phone business in Honkers. Not only that, the old man has a deal before Australian authorities that could result in him taking control of the Optus mobile phone business, which would make the seriously rich and cashed up Li Ka-shing a real threat on the domestic mobile market.
While he has attempted to build a business empire to rival that of his father's, the younger Li frequently has come unstuck and Li Ka-shing has ridden to the rescue each time.
In 1995 Li senior paid Richard $US74.5 million for a pre-Internet communications system which hasn't been heard of since.
Another spectacular effort was Richard's decision to splurge $US720 million for a prime piece of real estate in the heart of Tokyo. Even by Tokyo standards, the price was over the top. A few months later, Hutchison Whampoa again steamed in, buying just under half the project for $US186 million in a move that saved the son.
What a pity Telstra didn't do a little more research into the Li family's internal ructions before siding with the son.
A three-course deal
They put together a tasty deal up at UBS Warburg. It's a bit like a lasagne. You take an acquisition, layer it with a complicated hive-off and smother it with lots of investment banking spiel.
And it's all designed to satisfy the fussy appetite of the competition commission's Professor Fels.
The award-winning chef - remember the Queensland Independent Wholesalers deal with Davids - is Warburg's managing director Chris Mackay.
He and his team will need to be on their best form to convince Fels' palate that a Woolworths bid for Dairy Farm's Franklins supermarkets business is tasty. So far, we understand, the recipe Warburg is preparing is for Woolworths to buy Franklins, then hive some of the stores off into a separate vehicle.
Meanwhile, the board of Hong Kong's Dairy Farm won't have just the company's earnings on its plate when it releases the company's results today. Apart from the financials, it's getting some help from J.P. Morgan on the difficult sale of its Franklins supermarket arm.
NRMA drives uphill into dead end
After reminding one of its members, Bill Snodgrass, a little while back that if he continued in his efforts through the courts to call a meeting of NRMA members that it would pursue him for costs, in the end it needn't have bothered.
On Friday in the Supreme Court, Justice William Windeyer found against the NRMA in its efforts to have the meeting stopped. That meeting will ask members to decide whether the NRMA should reimburse its former director Richard Talbot for the costs of mounting an opposition to the demutualisation.
To think that one self-represented NRMA member would do so well in the courts in the face of NRMA's gaggle of legal help, led by its silk, Bruce McClintock SC. Demonstrating that it is an organisation of principle, no matter the pettiness of the matter, the NRMA was quick to announce it would appeal the decision.
Pilot light goes out in style
George Soros admits that he's an "over-aged prima donna". Isn't that what the Business Council has been privately calling Allan Fels for years?
Publicly, it was all claps on the back and handshakes on Friday evening, when the business and political powers that be, including Fels, farewelled AGL's retiring head gas man, Len Bleasel.Treasurer Michael Egan gave the speech, John Howard also attended (in surroundings where at least he still has some fans), as did St George Bank's Ed O'Neal.
Charge of the Lightbody brigade
While the fraught Australian Bitchy Commission is about to screen a drama about an Australian farming family fighting a fictitious bank to keep their property following a soured loan deal, a real-life drama of a chap's life and his battle with Frank Cicutto's serried ranks of bank officers unfolds in the Supreme Court today.
While the nation was preparing to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1988, a group of NAB's diligent credit recovery officers were busily putting the finishing touches to documents appointing insolvency expert Brian Silvia to the assets of Lawrose Pty Ltd, Hollywood Boulevarde and Jayanda Pty Ltd.
Less than a week earlier, those companies had signed off on documents that gave the bank a fixed and floating charge over a raft of assets, replacing more legally tenuous personal director guarantees for secured assets.
The director in question, Jim Lightbody, has since lost all his assets - and his marriage - and gone bankrupt.
The bank's exquisite timing was a bolt out of the blue for the borrower, Lightbody, who at the time was running a video store and a Toyota dealership in Canberra.
NAB is being sued by liquidator Michael Jones for alleged deception aimed at moving itself from unsecured creditor to secured creditor. Where has Lightbody found the money to fight on?
The liquidator's action is being funded by third-party litigation funding, and promises to carry significantly more interest than the long-running $50 billion damages case mounted by John Machonochie.
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