Shaun Drummond

Transpacific’s Stewart Cummins says liquidity is good and the cost of funds acceptable, but growth is still soft. Photo: Glenn Hunt

Finance bosses favour spending excess funds on acquisitions and capital purchases rather than returning money to shareholders in 2014, as optimism remains high buoyed by a falling currency, low interest rates and improving conditions in the United States and Europe.

But the return of public floats in recent months is raising valuations and making chief financial officers and their boards wary of paying too much.

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Ruth Liew

Patrick Regan joins QBE at a difficult time for the company: the global insurer, which has a market value of $14.6 billion, issued a shock profit downgrade before Christmas.

QBE Insurance Group has appointed the chief financial officer of British insurer Aviva Patrick Regan as its new global finance boss.

The appointment comes after ­Steven Burns, the successor to long-standing QBE CFO Neil Drabsch, decided not to take the role, three months before he was due to take the reins in January. Mr Regan will succeed Mr Drabsch in June.

Mr Drabsch pushed back his retirement by a year after Mr Burns’s shock decision to leave the position.

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Shaun Drummond

Chad Barton, the CFO of Salmat, is looking for his next big challenge after leading the restructure of the direct marketing business since 2009.

After the completion of the sale of its print-based, corporate bill distribution business process outsourcing business to Fuji-Xerox, and numerous acquisitions of digital businesses to set Salmat on a new path, Mr Barton said it was time to progress his career further and will leave the company in February.

The BPO business sold for $375 million in October 2012, but it has taken a year to separate the IT backend, including Salmat’s data centres which were in the BPO business.

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Shaun Drummond

Alison Harrop resigned as chief financial officer of Australia Post in December to take up a senior finance job at Westpac in February. Photo: Josh Robenstone

After a two-and-a-half year stint in the public sector, Australia Post finance chief Alison Harrop will start a new job as general manager, group finance, at Westpac Banking Corp in February after leaving the national postal service in December.

Ms Harrop’s chief experience is in financial services, including 13 years in numerous senior roles at Macquarie Group and as CFO of the Australian arm of Deutsche Bank.

It is understood she will report to Westpac deputy chief financial officer Peter King and will be the chief candidate to take over from him.

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Shaun Drummond

The finance boss of WA-based mining services company Decmil has resigned after nearly seven years with the company.

Decmil said on Monday she had resigned to pursue other interests. She was not immediately available to comment on her plans.

Craig Amos, group manager for corporate development, will be interim CFO until the company can find a replacement for Ms Campbell.

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Shaun Drummond

Barry Thomas, managing director of the Australian arm of US-based Cook Medical, is passionate about adopting patent box rules here.  Photo: Glenn Hunt

Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos has confirmed that the government will consider so-called “patent box” tax rules to help manufacturers.

A review of research and development this year will consider the rules, which include lower taxes on profits from patents developed in Australia.

Industry body AusBiotech and the Export Council of Australia are finalising a proposal for patent box rules, which they hope to put to the government ahead of the May federal budget.

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Shaun Drummond

Like most mining services companies, Boart Longyear has suffered from the downturn in investment in the mining sector over the past 18 months. 

The share price of ASX-listed global mining services company Boart Longyear spiked on Tuesday after it announced Rio Tinto executive Jeffrey Olsen will start as its new chief financial officer almost a year after his predecessor left.

Mr Olsen, the chief commercial officer of Rio Tinto’s Iron & Titanium business, will start on April 1.

The company’s share price rose to 47¢ when the market opened on Tuesday from a Monday close of 41¢. The share price has plummeted from a high of $2.29 on February 13, 2013, but has been climbing from its nadir on December 5 of 27¢.

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Shaun Drummond

Lee White, CEO, Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia says in the digital age “keeping within boundaries of the law isn’t enough to protect a company from generating a bad reputation. You now need to be within the bounds of what the public deems to be ethical.” Photo: Sasha Woolley

More than a decade ago the triple ­bottom line added social and environmental concerns to profit. But in the absence of legal compulsion, responsibility was hived off to sustainability managers and public relations departments. Now the ethical ground has shifted squarely under the feet of CFOs as politicians and social media have shone a light on the extremes of tax minimisation, whipping a storm of moral outrage as tax takes dwindle and citizens are forced to swallow big cuts to public spending.

Doing business in developing markets where bribes are how officials get paid has become a lot riskier and supply chains are being scrutinised for industrial abuses as finance bosses take to offshoring with gusto.

Peter Day, a director on the board of the former Centro and the business representative on the accounting and ­ethics standards board, is not alone when he suggests “values gateways” should bar executives from receiving bonuses if they don’t meet formal ­ethical standards. He says ethics are essentially customs, and these are changing as technology makes it easier to circumvent national controls, but also makes it easier to blow the whistle.

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Shaun Drummond

The European Parliament has introduced mandatory rotation of audit firms every 10 years in a surprise last minute deal on Wednesday.

The big accounting firms have been fighting the move as it reduces their hold over clients, with longstanding audit assignments giving them a foot in the door to offer more lucrative business such as management consulting.

But auditors argue the introduction of mandatory rotation has failed to bring improvements in independence or competition where it has already been introduced, including in Italy and The Netherlands.

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Shaun Drummond

Five of the 10 biggest M&A; deals of 2013 have been announced in the three months since the election. Photo: Andrew Quilty

Advisers and bankers are keeping their fingers crossed a smattering of bidding wars are a sign boardrooms are confident enough for 2014 to be a fine vintage for M&A deals.

M&A is high risk, with many variables over long periods, and regardless of the economic cycle, extracting real value is hard.

But veteran takeover lawyers Tony Damian and Rodd Levy, from Herbert Smith Freehills, reckon a combination of a new, ostensibly more business-friendly federal government, shareholder pressure to return cash or do something useful with their money, and more positive signs from developed countries – not to mention access to relatively cheap capital – is tipping their hand.

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Paul Fegan, the CFO of lenders mortgage insurer Genworth Australia, has resigned less than a year after taking up the role.

The former St George bank chief executive will be replaced by Genworth’s investor relations head Georgette Nicholas, reports Ruth Liew

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Shaun Drummond and Edmund Tadros

Origin Energy’s director of finance and strategy, Karen Moses.

The average pay for the top-10 earning finance bosses has fallen by 5.2 per cent in 2013, while it has risen 7.2 per cent for the highest paid female CFOs.

The fall partially reverses a 10 per cent rise last year.

However, there are several newcomers to the top echelons of finance chiefs this year, and on average the individuals now in the top 10 paying roles have seen their pay rise by 37.5 per cent to $4,16 million. But excluding retirees, promotions and new appointments, the rise was about 8.3 per cent compared to 2012.

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Shaun Drummond

The new charities commission has made similar arguments to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that it should be given the chance to prove it will actually cut cost rather than add to it.

As it said before the election, the Government still intends to scrap the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and return control over NGO reporting to the tax office.

Murray Baird, Assistant Commissioner of the Australian Charities and Not-For Profits Commission established in November 2012, said most charities want to keep the ACNC because it is solving their biggest problem - the cost of multiple reporting to different states and licences to approve fund raising.

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Shaun Drummond

Goodman Fielder has hired Patrick Gibson to be CFO of the listed food maker, replacing Shane Gannon who departs this month to be finance boss at property developer Mirvac.

Mr Gibson has been the group financial controller at global logistics company Brambles since 2008.

Mr Gannon was hired in 2011 to help turnaround Goodman Fielder, which has been struggling with high input costs and a price squeeze from supermarkets.

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Theresa Mlikota is moving on after two-and-a-half years as finance chief of mining services company Macmahon Holdings to be CFO of Leighton Holdings’ subsidiary Thiess.

Leighton is Macmahon’s largest shareholder and has recently bought most of the mining services company’s poorly performing civil construction business.

Ms Mlikota will replace Sue Palmer at Thiess in March 2014 when she retires after almost three years in the role.

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