When it comes to getting money out of the Packer boys, Mariah Carey could learn from the veteran who has served both Kerry and James – John (JA) Alexander.
"You only get one Alan Bond in your life," Kerry Packer famously quipped after selling the Nine TV network to the Perth billionaire for an astonishing sum. But JA has not done badly with his two Packers.
In January he was elevated to the role of chairman of Crown Resorts, and on Thursday he added the chief executive title to his duties. But his golden run with the Packers stretches back to 1999 when he was appointed boss of ACP Magazines, fresh from his ouster as The Sydney Morning Herald's editor-in-chief and publisher.
In 2007 he picked up his first gold bounty: a $15 million redundancy payout from the split of the old Packer flagship – Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd – into separate media and gambling companies.
Don't worry, he wasn't left jobless. JA stood to earn $15 million over the following five years sitting on the boards of the two entities created from the split: Crown and Consolidated Media Holdings. He also walked with options worth $3.5 million at the time of the split.
His role as James Packer's lieutenant appeared over in 2012 when Packer sold his media business to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
That changed in 2014 when Packer made moves to keep JA in the tent. Crown sweetened his contract in a move that would award him up to $4.5 million in bonus payments over the ensuing four years. This was on top of his $1.5 million base pay.
Under the latest deal announced on Thursday, JA's base pay has been elevated to $3.5 million, and he could earn another $500,000 in short-term incentives.
Oh, and his Crown shares are currently worth around $11 million.
High roller
JA is not the only one on a golden roll. The Chinese high rollers might be deserting his casinos, but the cash will still be rolling in for billionaire James Packer.
Crown Resorts has announced it will pay a bonus dividend, as well as increasing its regular pay out to investors, which is expected to deliver $489 million cash Packer who is its largest shareholder.
For the first half, Crown announced that it will raise its interim dividend to 30¢ per share and pay a special 83¢ dividend. The bonus cash comes from the sell-down of Crown's stake in the Macau venture, Melco Crown, and a retreat from its global ambitions to focus on the Australian market.
The extra bonus for Packer is that these dividends will be franked to 60 per cent which reduce his tax bill. Crown has said it also expects to pay a 30¢ per share dividend after its full year result in August.
Packer's cash bonus is not the only gain he will make from Crown's generosity. The casino operator announced plans to buy back about $500 million worth of shares as another capital management exercise. It estimates it could buy back about 44 million shares, or six per cent of its issued capital.
For those with short memories, Packer sold down his controlling stake in August last year. It generated a $448 million cash bonus for the billionaire, but reduced his holding below 50 per cent.
A buy-back of this scale would take Packer's stake, held via his private company Consolidated Press Holdings (CPH), to just over 50 per cent.
There were few surprises in the Crown result after it announced that its high roller business had tanked by an astonishing 45 per cent for the half year following the arrest of employees in China. The arrests happened in October, which means that the high roller exodus occurred only over the last three months of the year.
Farewell Fahour
So the multimillion-dollar postie, Ahmed Fahour, has finally hung up his delivery sack having accomplished the transformation he envisioned when he joined the organisation back in 2010.
"You would not be surprised to hear that in my view he has delivered value for money for the organisation," Fahour's chairman John Stanhope told The Australian Financial Review's Tony Boyd soon after the announcement. But he would say that wouldn't he?
And what does Fahour think of the brouhaha over his $5.6 million pay packet? Well, The Australian's Robert Gottliebsen wrote a story entitled: "Why Ahmed Fahour is worth every cent of his $5.6 million Australia Post salary".
Three people tweeted the story including someone by the name of Ahmed Fahour.
.@BGottliebsen: Why Ahmed Fahour is worth every cent of his $5.6m Australia Post salary https://t.co/7aCWsAruT9 #ausbiz #auspost #CEO— Business Review (@aus_business) February 14, 2017
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