Mistress leads the charge
Gary Weiss...a Dylan tragic and home strummer.
CBD
Lots of militaria, thanks to Wing Commander Kate Askew.
SingTel's steal of Optus was finally concluded by the time the little hand crossed the number five on Sunday morning. Given negotiations had been running for 12 hours, we don't expect anyone in the room to be able to remember whether that had been adjusted for the end of daylight saving or not.
SingTel boss Brigadier General Lee Hsien Yang's right-hand woman and mistress of the numbers Chua Sock Koong, who is by all accounts as clued up as her boss, led Morgan Stanley foot soldiers James Pearson and Derek Stanmore (with heavy hitters Rick Ball, in an army hair cut, and Steve Harker as late reinforcements) in the bayonet charge for SingTel against Cable & Wireless Optus and its adviser, Merrill Lynch, commanded by Mike Tilley.
Lee, who'd been on the blower with C&W's Graham Wallace, flew into Sydney on Sunday once peace was declared. He gave a polished performance for analysts, dressed in a grey suit and moccasins at the Intercontinental, which is about as close to Raffles that you can get in Sydney. He then flew out yesterday afternoon in time to front his institutional investors in Singapore this morning.
Stonewall Lee
After being outflanked last year by Richard Li and his friends in Beijing in the battle for Cable & Wireless HKT, B.G. Lee must take some satisfaction from the fact that he won Cable & Wireless Optus by sticking to his guns.
That is, he didn't get into a bidding war.
Lee's airforce discipline is yet to be exercised on the Optus management but, being the ultimate diplomat, Optus boss Chris Anderson will surely do his best to slip quietly into the ranks. How he holds up under battle stresses that a military operation like SingTel may incur is a question in many minds.
However, Lee has already softened his military stance within SingTel, starting with his own title.
He has requested that he no longer be referred to as Brigadier General, or Mr President, but just plain old Hsien Yang. Or Mr Lee. Or B.G. Lee if there are any Singaporean hardliners among his staffers who can't cope with the new-found informality.
He is, of course, the second son of Singapore's legendary premier Lee Kuan Yew and his older brother is Lee Hsien Loong, deputy prime minister and head of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Midshipman Anderson
Having been inducted into the international game of mergers and acquisitions - and having slipped into a backseat role in the negotiations - it's not hard to see that Chris Anderson is better suited to the politics part of the machinations, an area in which no man will dispute he is immensely skilled.
How important those skills are to his new commander is yet to be seen. On the surface, it's clear SingTel is not going to any trouble to woo Anderson. There are no golden handcuffs, no sugar-sweet options deals. And his Cable & Wireless options are under water too.
Li's bogus degree
While B.G. Lee is getting the better of Cable & Wireless Optus, spare some sympathy for his old rival, the above-mentioned Richard Li, once the shining light of Telstra's Asian expansion.
Not only has the baby tycoon been caught out over his academic qualifications, it seems his Pacific Century CyberWorks may now find itself further embarrassed by its bungled attempts to explain the gaffe.
Last week the company blamed its well-oiled public relations department for perpetuating the myth, in company biographies and on its Web site, that Li had a degree in computer science from the prestigious Stanford University.
An embarrassed Richard was forced to admit in an interview in Japan that, though he attended the university, he never actually graduated. But PCCW was adamant the claim was not made "in public disclosures filed by the company in accordance with applicable legal requirements".
The only problem, according to Hong Kong merchant banker David Webb, who runs Webbsite.com, is that Richard has made the claim in legal filings in both the US and Singapore for other companies in which he is a director.
One is the Nasdaq-listed Indian portal Rediff.com Ltd.
Richard has been a director since April last year and, in the prospectus, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission last June, his biography reads in part: "Mr Li holds a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Stanford University."
Then there is the the Singapore-listed Mediaring.com Ltd.
When it published a prospectus in November 1999, it stated: "Mr Li graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University."
Electrical engineering? What happened to the computers? Given the dire predictions for CyberWorks' results this week, Richard may need to take the company in a different direction some time soon. So why not into the sparkie game: some blokes get good money replacing fuses.
Backstage at the Dylan do
There was no mistaking that wild afro backstage in the VIP lounge in Centennial Park on Sunday night.
GPG's Gary Weiss looked right at home, resplendent in black leather jacket, mingling with the glamorous and assorted rock groupies after witnessing a fine performance from his idol, Bob Dylan.
"I'm a big fan from way back," Weiss confided to one of our ill mannered and poorly dressed spies who inadvertently stumbled up to the VIP bar.
Having seen the rock legend on numerous occasions, Weiss proclaimed this tour Dylan's best yet and was particularly impressed by his handiwork on lead guitar.
Corporate raider by day, serious muso by night, the good doctor occupies his spare time by locking himself away in his home music studio and knocking out a few tunes on one of his impressive collection of guitars.
On a recent trip to the United States, he spotted a Rickenbacker electric 12-string, walked into the shop, tried it out and couldn't help himself.
While there were any number of actors and other show-biz types milling about the tent backstage, corporate leaders were few and far between.
Malcolm Turnbull, once a colleague of Weiss during his brief stint with Whitlam Turnbull, was scheduled to put in an appearance but cancelled at the last minute.
We're not surprised, we couldn't imagine Turnbull would be caught dead in a leather jacket.
smh.com.au |
