‘Well I’d rather it was just in the office, if you don’t mind. If I could get my assistant to call you…’
‘I don’t deal with assistants. It’ll be quite painless, the dinner, I promise you. It’s a well-established format I’ve used many times. You might even enjoy it.’
Jack handed over his card with his direct line number and found himself in the restaurant before the week was out. She was extremely professional and businesslike in her approach to the interview, as they sat in a booth at the back of a fashionable restaurant in The Rocks. She ordered the wine and the food, after asking what he’d like, told the waiter to leave the white wine out of the ice bucket, was in control from the moment she arrived fifteen minutes after he’d been seated. Her research was extraordinary. She knew details about his life he’d forgotten himself. When she asked about his competitive streak he’d tried to shrug it off with an ‘Oh shucks’ line, but she brushed it away with facts.
‘You won the eight hundred metres open championship in the GPS athletics in one minute fifty-four point two seconds which, although it wasn’t a record, was only nought point five seconds outside; you play golf off a single figure handicap, you blitzed the top end of the Sydney property market for ten years, you’re the CEO of a major corporation. Don’t be coy.’
The restaurant was nearly empty, and half of the second bottle of wine sat between them. She’d switched off the tape machine ten minutes ago and put the notebook into some extraordinary handbag that appeared to be constructed from rusty nails. They sat, relatively silent after the steady rhythm of her questions. He wasn’t entirely surprised when she carefully removed her glasses and, looking him straight in the eyes, said ‘I don’t normally sleep with the people I interview Jack, but in your case I might make an exception.’ It was two days later and the buzz of press interviews and chance meetings with the Prime Minister had worn off. Jack sat at his desk with stacks of documents arranged across its surface. He’d asked Renton Healey for a summary of the company’s financial position, key performance indicators and potential cost savings, but this trolley-load of unbound papers had arrived. When he’d complained that he was drowning in detail, Renton had replied, ‘Let me know what you feel is irrelevant and I’ll have it removed immediately.’ The implication was obvious-you won’t know enough to sift the gold from the dross.
But he was sifting: painstakingly, excruciatingly slowly, Jack was working through the piles. And the nuggets were there. Sometimes they appeared to be fool’s gold and raised more questions than answers, but he was determined to grasp the essence of this business. He would not be a once-over-lightly presenter of someone else’s work-a show pony of a CEO. And if any of them thought he’d ever operated that way, they were wrong. Sure he’d been the creative force in his own business, but he’d always understood the detail, even if it was managed by others.
He was struggling with the detail, or lack of it, in a thick pile of contracts Renton had dropped on his desk. He’d wanted to examine the quantum of HOA’s payments to outside contractors, but instead of an analysis he’d been given all the legal contracts. His initial browsing had been disturbing. The monies involved were way beyond what he’d expected, and some of the contracts were vague in the extreme; the description of the services to be provided was so broad as to be meaningless.
The further he dug down into the papers the more alarmed he became. Some of these matters he would raise at the board meeting next week. Others would require more intense scrutiny. But he wasn’t going to let it go. He’d sell the story better than anyone, but it was going to be his story.
‘Thank you, gentlemen. The hour is past. We have a quorum so let me call the meeting to order.’
Sir Laurence’s prim tones relayed antiseptically through the next-generation German sound system, bounced dully off the silk-lined boardroom walls and fell mainly on deaf ears. As he glanced around the U-shaped table, he was reminded that the ‘gentlemen’ was no longer entirely appropriate. His slightly bloodshot eyes fell on the brightly coloured plumage of Rosemary Stipple, the headmistress of the private school that one of Mac’s daughters had attended. She’d recently joined the board at Mac’s insistence, despite Sir Laurence’s strong objections that she had no business experience of any kind and had never been on any other board except that of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra-and only because her husband was a major benefactor. The market would see her as no more than a sycophantic supporter of Macquarie James Biddulph and a sop to political correctness and would deride the appointment. So said Sir Laurence. Mac had just laughed.
‘The market follows me, Laurence. They couldn’t care less who’s on the board.’ Sir Laurence’s lips curled slightly at the left corner at this remark. ‘All that corporate governance crap is just for the annual report and the regulator. Anyway, Rosemary is a woman.’
On this last point Sir Laurence wasn’t entirely convinced. She appeared to be dressed at present in the plumage of a rainbow lorikeet. He’d always understood it was the male bird that wore the brightest colours. In any event, she might not be a man but if she wanted to be a member of his board she would have to do her best.
‘Gentlemen. If we could please.’ He tapped the small microphone in front of him with his silver pen. The sound reverberated through the fifteen miniature speakers in the ceiling and finally penetrated the consciousness of his distinguished board members. They were all in their customary places. It had always fascinated him the way some process of natural selection caused people to occupy the same seats in a meeting room even though there were no allocated places. It was a ritual dance, a pecking order. As far as he was concerned, so long as they all understood that the chairman’s seat was at the head of the table, they could scatter where they liked.
‘The minutes of the meeting of February the fifteenth. Any comments?’
There were never any comments on the minutes. The directors were acutely aware that at least four or five drafts would have passed across the antique partners’ desk in Sir Laurence’s office in a flurry of neatly pencilled corrections before they were finally allowed, reluctantly, into the voluminous bound volume that comprised a set of HOA board papers. This document was delivered by courier to the office or home of each director in a sealed security pouch and had to be signed for by the recipient before it was released. Sir Laurence had considered locked and chained red boxes in the tradition of Westminster, but had rejected this as perhaps too governmental. Nevertheless, he insisted on the intricate sealing device which required a tough plastic tab to be broken-often at the expense of Rosemary Stipple’s fingernails or Justin Muir’s temper-just as he did on the sweeping of this room for bugs before every meeting. You could never be too careful.
‘Shouldn’t we wait to get Mac on the line, Laurence?’ To the casual observer, Jack’s question was a harmless observation. To Laurence Treadmore it contained a quiver of sharp insults. It failed to address him as chairman-the proper appellation in a boardroom. It then failed to recognise his everyday title, a title conferred on him by the Queen of Australia. It came from someone who, while purporting to be the chief executive of a major public company, wasn’t even wearing a tie let alone a jacket in his boardroom. He’d already discussed the question of the tie with Mac but he’d just laughed it off, saying, ‘We all have our own style, Laurence, even you. Who cares so long as the market loves him?’
He refused to look directly at Jack as he answered-but then he never looked directly at him or addressed him by name.
‘I understand we’re having difficulty establishing a connection to the Kimberley. Perhaps the secretary could ask our technician to step in.’
The rest of the board resumed checking their diaries and phone messages in a series of electronic beeps, despite the chairman’s clear ruling that no such devices were to be switched on during a meeting. Only Sir Laurence noticed the totally inappropriate exchange of ‘G’day Tom’ and ‘Hi Jack, how are you?’ between the technician and the CEO. This type of familiarity between management and workers could only lead to trouble.
Crackles and static began to emanate from the doughnut-shaped speakerphone in the middle of the table and finally they heard the unmistakable tones of Mac.
‘We have him now, Sir Laurence.’
‘Thank you. You may leave us. Good morning, Mac, we have you now, although I must say the line isn’t particularly good, there’s still a great deal of static. Is there stormy weather in the Kimberley?’
Mac laughed from the gut. ‘Stormy weather? It’s the dry season. It doesn’t rain for months. I’m in the shower, Laurence, that’s the noise you can hear, and a bloody good shower it is, too. Biggest head on it you’ve ever seen. Had it brought over from England. How are you all?’
The distasteful nature of this exchange caused both corners of the Treadmore mouth to curl-usually a dangerous sign. This constant failure to attend board meetings in person, no doubt a complete absence of any attempt to read the papers and now to attend in a state of undress, even by phone, was beyond any pale Sir Laurence could conjure. How could two such distinctly opposing personalities survive together? The answer, as both were acutely aware, lay in the bonding power of money. It was the Araldyte of their relationship, whose unique
