The Ivy has long had a reputation for being one of Sydney’s most debauched venues, despite the best efforts of its owners to put lipstick on a pig.
And that’s before you even get to the claims of exploitation of female staff that surfaced just over a year ago in this masthead. (The company rejected claims it had created an environment that exploited women and put its staff in danger.)
So we were intrigued to learn the venue will soon play host to a knees-up organised by one of Australia’s biggest superannuation funds, UniSuper, with a special guest appearance from storied actor Claudia Karvan, OAM, to celebrate, er, International Women’s Day.
We can’t help pitying the genius in the $158 billion super fund’s marketing department who thought this one was a good idea. Pour one out too for the fund’s 670,000-odd members who will be left to foot the bill! Justin Hemmes, whose Merivale Group is still recovering from critical media coverage, will no doubt be all too happy to accommodate.
The lunch, members were dutifully informed this week, will take place in the Ivy Ballroom on March 11. “Join us as we celebrate great women and greater futures and acknowledge the ways we support great retirement outcomes every day,” members were told by email.
We were dying to hear what Karvan thought of all this, and ask her about the size of her appearance fee, which is standard practice for such events. When CBD reached her by phone on Wednesday morning, Karvan immediately said she had to pop off to a Zoom meeting and hurriedly rang off before we could get a question in. She didn’t respond to our text message, and her agent didn’t get back to us either. But we get that successful stars have very busy schedules.
Unfortunately, our luck didn’t improve with UniSuper. The fund declined to answer questions about how much it is spending on the soiree and, importantly, why on earth the fund thought the Ivy was the best venue for an International Women’s Day event.
We did, however, hear the event was booked as far back as last March. We can only hope UniSuper got a good deal. After all, the fund has best financial interest duty obligations to think about.
Brian McNamee’s CSL headache, and an ‘absolute’ cock-up
Everyone has bad days. Just ask CSL chairman Brian McNamee, who was forced to watch the blue chip biotech company get hammered by the market after his board announced it had “retired” its chief executive Paul McKenzie, recalling in our mind the way that Harrison Ford’s detective character Deckard “retired” replicants in the sci-fi film Blade Runner.
And when things go pear-shaped, we’re all prone to errors.
Such was the case when CSL announced McKenzie’s departure to the ASX late on Tuesday, but before the market closed, angering investors and triggering a market sell-down that pushed shares down 5 per cent to $171.39, shaving $9 off the stock within minutes, and dragging the ASX200 down with it.
But clearly the announcement document was the result of many hands. How else to explain the fact that a strike-through editing mark had been left on the PDF, concerning the important matter of the one-off $US4 million ($5.6 million) equity grant set to be handed to the company’s interim boss, Gordon Naylor.
In such matters, you really don’t want to be mistakenly sending out your draft edits.
The company said in its announcement to the market: “The grant will be subject to malus and clawback and the board has absolute discretion to determine the treatment of equity granted under CSL’s plan rules”. But the word “absolute” had been struck through.
Which version was correct? We reached out to CSL, and a company spokesman told us the announcement snafu had been corrected on its website. After it was struck out, “absolute” was reinstated. Glad to be of service in clearing that one up.
Spotted
Brad Banducci’s new gig at the ticketing giant Ticketek appears to be doing wonders for his blood pressure. The former Woolworths boss was seen sauntering the streets of Paddington looking “relaxed” on Tuesday evening clad in a white T-shirt and jeans, carrying a leather bag and heading for the dentist.
Must be liberating to have done away with that regulation Woolies staff name tag.
Banducci started his gig as TEG chief executive this year. The end of his Woolworths stint is remembered for his car crash 2024 ABC’s Four Corners interview, when he asked for a comment to be removed and walked out mid-interview. Banducci later told business publication Rampart he felt he had been set up, given he said he was advised he could stop the interview at any time.
“There was a series of things that happened that we weren’t made aware of. And if I pulled out the ABC Editorial Code, I would question whether Four Corners lived the code that the ABC publishes as their manifesto of how they want to treat people,” Banducci told Rampart.
Anyhow, just days later, Woolworths announced his departure would occur that year.
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John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
Stephen Brook is a special correspondent for The Age and CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously deputy editor of The Sunday Age. He is a former media editor of The Australian and spent six years in London working for The Guardian.Connect via X or email.