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FuturePlus CIO is
crowing about new office
Artie Beetson. Arguably the greatest prop in rugby
league’s post-war history. The
first Aboriginal to captain Australia in any sport. State of Origin
hero. Bringer of The Biff. And
most importantly for our purposes here, glue in the marriage of Michael Block, the chief investment officer of FuturePlus. Back to Big Artie in a moment.
As you can see from these pictures of Michael’s office at FuturePlus, the man is cock-a-hoop for the club that most associate with Beetson, the Eastern Suburbs Roosters. If a nook or cranny of his Margaret Street
digs are not stuffed with one piece of
Easts memorabilia or another, they are
stuffed with family photos, although
many of the family members are depicted
in Roosters clobber and/or posing with
Roosters greats.
Among the prize items
in Michael’s collection are the original
supporter’s kit he got as a kid back in
the ‘60s, a 1970s pokie coin cup from
Easts Leagues (adorned with the old
red-bird-in-ablue- shield logo that
Michael prefers), and autographs from
just about every Easts immortal you’d
care to name, Jack Gibson to Brad
Fittler. There’s even some gear with an industry connection. Doug Bickerton (brother of Bruce Bickerton, Lazard Asset Management’s relationship manager) is a painter with a penchant for chickens and eggs, and a couple of his rooster originals have found their way on to Block’s walls.
So why does Michael have all of this priceless memorabilia at work? His wife, a big Parramatta Eels fan, can’t stand it being at home. “At least we’ve got Artie Beetson,” Block reminds himself, referring to big Artie’s stint in the blue-and-yellow toward the end of his career. Colleagues at FuturePlus have taken to calling their CIO’s office ‘The Coop’, but Block says the way the Roosters are playing this season, it should probably be renamed “The Mausoleum”. Mayor
of Chicago
tries the Aussies again A
delegation from Melbourne’s Centre For Investor Education were wondering to what they owed the honour when Richard Daley, the Mayor of Chicago,
addressed them on their recent visit
Stateside.
But investors in Macquarie
Infrastructure Group would not have been surprised.
The boss of America’s
third-largest city would have been
salivating at the chance for some face
time with Aussie fiduciaries, given at
the height of the credit boom he’d
leased the Chicago Skyway to Macquarie
partner Cintra) for a cool US$1.83
billion. That meant Macquarie also needed
to control the Indiana Toll
Road, the major
source of traffic for the Skyway, so
with Cintra they signed a 75-year lease
on that blacktop for a whopping US$3.8
billion. As if that weren’t enough, in
bargaining with Indiana Governor Mitch
Daniels the Big Mac was mandated to make
US$400 million of improvements, such as
installing electronic tolling.
Fast forward three years, the bottom has fallen out of the US economy, car use is way down and Barron’s Magazine estimates the road is worth US$1.5 billion at best. No wonder Daniels told the magazine: “It was the best deal since Manhattan
was sold for beads.” He’s socked
half a billion of the windfall into a
sort of Indiana Future Fund, and the
rest into one-time capital works
programs that can’t be hurting his
popularity, while MIG lists the toll road
as its worst-performing asset.
Mayor
Daley had his neighbour front-of-mind
when he went to see the Aussie trustees
in early April. We’re told he may have
casually mentioned Chicago’s
Midway Airport,
the attempted privatisation of which
was at that moment breaking down,
because a Citi-led consortium couldn’t
raise funds beyond a US$126 million
downpayment. In any event, the
trustees must have resisted any attempts
to loosen their pursestrings, because
the privatisation collapsed before April
was out.
We wonder how Daley would have described the deal in a couple of years, if he’d gotten some Aussie investors over the line and then stood back as air traffic continued to tumble? Best deal since Russia
sold Alaska to the Yanks for two cents an acre? AUSCOAL
employee wins ‘P.A of the Year’ The ‘Great Place To Work’
Awards got a bit of attention around the
traps last month, not least because
Russell Investments came third in Australia, while HostPlus and AUSCOAL snuck in to the Top 50. But let it be known that AUSCOAL also has Great Workers, officially, after the Australian Institute of Office Professionals named Janelle Welsh, personal assistant to CEO Bruce Watson, it’s ‘Office Professional of the Year’ last month.
The process involved an intensive interview by an AIOP judging panel, after which she was shortlisted as one of three finalists before claiming the award during a reception at Sydney’s Doltone House on May 1. “This award is fantastic recognition for Janelle and for the hard work and support she provides to the entire fund,” Watson said afterwards. “We are very proud of her ongoing success, her commitment to AUSCOAL and her inspirational work/life balance.”
He’s not kidding about the last part.
Apart from working full time, Janelle
is married with two children – one of
whom has several disabilities – is currently undertaking the AIOP Certificate in Business Program at Charles Sturt
University, while also
studying her PS146 in Superannuation.
Hats off, Janelle.
Shane
Oliver can’t get over Brady bonds We all
remember the 1974 banking crisis in the UK, but for one
economist the year has a special place
in history for a very different reason.
It was the year that American sitcom The
Brady Bunch was cancelled. Dr Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP Capital, admits he was – and still is – rather fond of Marcia Brady (aka Maureen McCormick) when growing up. “In
1974 the show was cancelled, but I was
still watching it on TV,” he told the
audience at a post-Budget breakfast
organised by AIST.
“I’ve told that story
so many times that someone bought me
Maureen Mc- Cormick’s autobiography
recently. I’ve just finished reading it.” But while Marcia clearly stole the show for Oliver, Naomi Steer, director of ASSET Super sided with Jan, who always felt she lived in her sister Marcia’s shadow, before putting her question to Minister for Superannuation, Nick Sherry.
“I’m with Jan, I never liked Marcia,
it was always Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,”
she quipped. Adopting the middle
ground, like a true politician, Sherry
responded: “Well, I liked all the girls.” (and Spanish
