Rear Window
Ghost of Ron Brierley returns to haunt Mark Bouris
Bouris hosted Yellow Brick Road shareholders in Sydney, seeking approval to take the lender private. Then, Ron Brierley showed up.
Mark Di StefanoReporterOne of Mark Bouris′ more admirable qualities is that he gets so much done with his time.
When not overseeing ASX-listed fire pits, Bouris has surgically attached himself to a lapel mic, polluting Spotify with fake-it-til-you-make-it podcast dreck. Or crystalballing on national TV about interest rates.
On Tuesday, Byron Bay’s answer to Joe Rogan was back at Yellow Brick Road, the troubled mortgage lender that pays him more than $1.15 million annually, of which $425,000 is to advertise the firm on podcasts and social media. That is, at a meeting of shareholders seeking approval to de-list the company from the ASX.
The take-private proposal was tabled last month. Bouris argued the company was “misunderstood” which, he said, discouraged investors, and that going private was the only option. He comforted poor shareholders in the Maple Room of Sydney’s Swissotel on Tuesday morning. But there was one final twist to this horror show.
The ghost of activist past Ron Brierley glided into the function room to confront Bouris, wearing what one person there described as a scruffy polo and shorts.
Kiwi-born Brierley made his name in the 1980s, painted by this newspaper as a once “swashbuckling corporate titan” spoken of in the same company as Robert Holmes a Court, Christopher Skase and Alan Bond. Brierley was once described by Solomon Lew as the “original raider” and the “best” who made his name in audacious activist plays, like Carlton & United Breweries, AGL and financial services company Tyndall.
He rose to the very top of the business and social establishment and was knighted in 1988.
Yet, his fall from grace hardly does justice to falls of grace. In 2019, Brierley was arrested, found with hard drives containing pictures of young girls. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison for possessing child sexual abuse material. Last year, Brierley’s term was shortened due to his declining health.
Though his health can’t be that bad. Brierley still had the ticker to show up to haunt Bouris and the YBR board, made up of Bouris’ brother Adrian and non-executive director John George.
Before the vote, Brierley rose to pose what would be the only question from shareholders in attendance.
Without a microphone, Brierley asked about the takeover offer he lobbed at YBR in 2018. Then less-blemished, Brierley’s Mercantile Investment Company offered Bouris 9¢ per share for the lender.
At the time, Bouris described the offer as “grossly inadequate”. Now, YBR and Bouris were trying to take the company private at 5¢ a share.
Directing the question at George, the only non-Bouris on the board, Brierley asked, well, what do you think of me now?
Attendees say George suggested that times had changed, referring to the regulatory environment that was spawned by the banking royal commission and the Hayne review.
In Japan, public companies had so much grief from Yakuza-aligned thugs shaking down directors they even coined a term for it: Sokaiya, literally meaning “annual meeting gangsters”. The problem forced almost all Japanese firms to hold AGMs on the same day to avoid criminal intrusion.
Which raises the question: how many other felons are lobbing in votes at AGMs this season. Have we checked Long Bay’s server? We might need a Brierley Rule.
A YBR spokesman declined to comment on Brierley’s appearance. Bouris eventually got what he wanted: more than 89 per cent of shareholders approved the plan to de-list.
A mercy killing for the Bouris penny stock. Marky Mark can get back to his precious podcasts and keeping up the Kabuki theatre of pretending to be the king of Australian business.
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