Shaun Drummond

G100 president Neville Mitchell: “There are processes and a culture that is developing that I think looks at the broader impact of regulation that I don’t think was there before.” Photo: Sasha Woolley

Chief financial officers from Australia’s largest companies have suggested more than $1.3 billion in regulatory savings across five sectors, but say any cuts must be accompanied by a cultural change in the regulators themselves.

More than a $1 billion of the savings recommended by the Group of 100 would come from changes in the way policy is formed for the highly regulated financial services sector. The other sectors covered were utilities, retail, services and manufacturing.

The recommendations to Josh Frydenberg, the parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, includes an appeal to curtail the way Australia’s financial regulators have been implementing numerous laws agreed globally in Australia, which the G100 says means they have strayed into deciding policy.

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Telstra’s CFO, Andy Penn, will add the telco’s Asian business to his CFO responsibilities

Chief financial officers have been jumping ship all of a sudden across numerous sectors, the latest from troubled insurance website iSelect.

David Chalmers announced his resignation on Wednesday after a bumpy float in June 2013. This included him acting as CEO for six months after its CEO Matt McCann resigned in October.

The CEO’s departure followed the corporate watchdog questioning iSelect’s prospectus forecasts.

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Shaun Drummond

The chief financial officer of McAleese Group, the owner of troubled trucking group Cootes Transport, Chris Nunn has resigned along with CEO Paul Garaty, reports Jared Lynch

Mr Nunn will be replaced by ex-GWA Group CFO Warren Saxelby.

Mr Nunn helped lead the turnaround of Centro property group (now Federation Centres) after it’s misstatement of liabilities during the financial crisis. He left the company two years ago and was replaced by former Westfield group CFO Marlon Teperson.

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Shaun Drummond

Smaller companies will no longer be able to just say they can’t afford to manage risk.

Chief financial officers and their CEOs will need to sign off on every financial report, not just the full year ones under the first revision to the ASX’s corporate governance guidelines since the financial crisis.

The third edition of the new guidelines, released on Thursday, also requires listed companies to say whether they have an internal audit function.

Under another change affecting risk management disclosures, if companies don’t have an internal auditor or an audit committee, for example, they can’t just say it is because they are too small and it is too expensive to maintain them. Companies will need to explain what other measures they have taken to monitor and minimise risk.

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Shaun Drummond

iiNet’s new CEO David Buckingham has more than a decade of experience in telecommunications in the UK

iiNet chief financial officer and acting CEO, David Buckingham, has officially taken over from CEO and founder Michael Malone who resigned on Friday, reports David Ramli

Mr Buckingham landed the CFO role in 2008 when he was in Perth looking to move from the UK and found iiNet had just lost its finance chief.

He spent a decade before iiNet in the telecommunications sector in the UK at Telewest and Virgin Media.

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Shaun Drummond

Years of regulatory tinkering to kick-start a retail corporate bond market will come to a head in June when legislative changes should pass that allow retail investors to buy bonds issued to institutional investors via the Australian Securities Exchange.

The new regime will also allow a less onerous prospectus to be used for retail bonds for multiple bond issues over three years, as long as the bonds are deemed “simple” enough.

The Australian Securities Exchange and some bankers insist the new mechanism will tap into demand from self-managed super funds for simple fixed-income investments.

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Shaun Drummond

Cochlear CFO and G100 national president Neville Mitchell says tax breaks are just one element determining where products are commercialised and manufactured.  Photo: Sasha Woolley

Cochlear chief financial officer Neville Mitchell says countries will always compete via tax incentives to attract companies, whatever agreement is forged by G20 leaders this year.

The new national president of the business executives’ peak body the Group of 100 will be involved in consultations on tax changes this year as the government grapples with forging an agreement between the G20 to stop profit shifting while some countries change their tax regimes to compete for companies’ intellectual property.

“I think it is impossible to have a completely identical tax regime everywhere – total harmonisation is impossible,” Mr Mitchell said.

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Shaun Drummond

Neville Mitchell has been CFO of Cochlear since it listed in 1995

Cochlear chief financial officer Neville Mitchell has been voted national president of the CFO peak body the Group of 100.

He takes over from Wesfarmers finance director, Terry Bowen, who has spent two years in the role.

Mr Mitchell has been the CFO of Cochlear since it listed in 1995.

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Shaun Drummond

Leighton CFO and deputy CEO, Peter Gregg, employment terminated

Leighton finance boss and deputy chief executive Peter Gregg’s ambitions to be a CEO have been thwarted again.

He will be replaced along with CEO Hamish Tyrwhitt as part of a board and management spill as majority shareholder Hochtief moves to up its stake to 74 per cent of Leighton Holdings.

However, both will receive multimillion dollar pay outs as their long-term incentives have been turned into cash.

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Shaun Drummond

Peter King, deputy CFO of Westpac, will take over from CFO Phil Coffey in April

Westpac deputy CFO Peter King will take over from chief financial officer Phil Coffey on April 1 when he moves to be deputy chief executive.

The respected Mr Coffey has been CFO of Westpac since 2005. Mr King has been deputy CFO since 2011 and has worked at Westpac for almost 20 years.

In December, Australia Post CFO, Alison Harrop, left after three years as finance boss to start as general manager, group finance of Westpac in February, reporting to Mr King.

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Shaun Drummond

Stephen Payne is moving to be CFO of the National Disability Insurance Agency. He has previous experience in a similar NSW scheme.

National Disability Insurance Agency finance boss Stephen Payne says his first task will be to set new budget forecasts as cost pressures increase on the project.

Mr Payne left his role as chief financial officer at the NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure on Friday after 18 months in the job.

The latest quarterly report from the new agency says costs for the first six months of the NDIA to December 2013 are half those of the original estimates and funding allowed.

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Shaun Drummond

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank was busy again in the debt markets last week, raising 125 million Swiss francs ($159 million) in its first ever issue in that market on Thursday.

The bank earlier also raised $500 million in a securitisation of its mortgages to local and offshore investors.

Head of capital and investor relations, Travis Crouch, said depending on market conditions and funding requirements, the bank expects to raise further wholesale debt this year.

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Shaun Drummond

The executive revolving door at Guildford Coal took another spin on Thursday as the company hired Michael Majendie from mining services company Sedgman as its latest finance boss.

He replaces Mark Reynolds, who has been acting CFO since Nathan Tinkler’s ex CFO Michael Wotherspoon resigned after six months in the job with the arrival of a new interim CEO.

Wotherspoon had replaced finance director Louis Chait who left Guildford in April 2013 after 11 months to take up a job at Glencore.

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Shaun Drummond

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is meeting debt investors in Europe hoping to raise further funds as it takes advantage of European investors looking for better yields.

Chief financial officer Richard Fennell confirmed representatives of the bank’s treasury team were in Europe hoping to borrow and encourage investors to buy into a securitisation of the bank’s mortgages.

“Depending on how that goes we may end up issuing some further debt,” he said.

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Chris Liddell is a former CFO of Microsoft and General Motors

Accounting software business Xero has appointed NZ born Chris Liddell, a former CFO of General Motors and Microsoft as its chairman, reports James Hutchinson

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