How did our CEOs, politicians, banks, businesses, economists and strategists fare in 2016?
CEOs: In a sense all CEOs were losers. Thanks to the many high-profile first strikes against remuneration reports there is a growing realisation that the glory days of excessive CEO pay are coming to an end. Respected National Australia Bank chairman Ken Henry told his bank's annual meeting that "enough is enough" and that the gap between CEO pay and the average worker had peaked. For the record, 100 years ago CEOs got paid 20 to 30 times the average worker and now it is 200 to 300 times.
A CEO who earned his pay was Richard Murray at JB Hi-Fi. He fended off Dick Smith, which went into liquidation, bought the Good Guys and delivered a gross return of 48 per cent.
Anthony Peter Tse is a winner as Galaxy Resources was the top performing stock this year in the S&P; ASX 200 with a return of 390 per cent.
Notable losers were former Dick Smith CEO Nick Abboud for services to rebate management and former Target CEO Stuart Machin, who knew nothing about attempts to make suppliers prop up profits but he left anyway.
Estia's Paul Gregersen, Bellamy's Laura McBain, Sirtex Medical's Gilman Wong and Blackmores' Christine Holgate discovered that share prices don't always go up.
Moya Dodd was a winner after being named the No.1 out of Westpac's 100 Women of Influence. She is an inspiration for women from all walks of life.
CHAIRMEN
The stand out loser in this category is Neil Balnaves at Ardent Leisure Group, who badly bungled the crisis management following the death of four people at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast. Others in the dog house were Rio Tinto's Jan du Plessis for taking so long to get a grip on the scale of the Guinea corruption allegations and Seven Media's Kerry Stokes for making "completely unacceptable" CEO behaviour acceptable. Peter Coates at Santos now sits on top of a stronger balance sheet but the market is deeply confused about the latest $1.5 billion equity raising.
Clear winners were Catherine Livingstone and John Mullen who now lead the boards at Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Telstra. They will most likely shake-up both organisations.
Gordon Cairns was a winner for overseeing much needed CEO changes at Woolworths and Origin. Both Brad Banducci and Frank Calabria are focused on shareholder returns and stronger balance sheets.
FINTECHS and SOFTWARE
This is a tricky category because so many great things are happening among privately owned companies. Sticking with the publicly listed stocks it is hard to go past Anthony Eisen's Afterpay Holdings (up 112 per cent this year), Larry Diamond and Peter Gray's zipMoney (up 88 per cent this year) and Richard White's WiseTech Global (up 67 per cent since listing in April).
The loser is distributed ledger technology, which, in its purest form, is known as blockchain. The revelation this year was that a distributed ledger is not a single source of truth. In other words, the solutions being developed at great cost are replicating the presence of duplicate records used today.
INVESTMENT BANKERS
Robin Bishop stands out for putting Macquarie at the top of the local M&A; league table. The key to this was to be on the NSW privatisation bonanza and Port of Melbourne transaction. A hand's on banker with several sizeable deals under his belt in 2016 is Dan Janes at Credit Suisse. He has been fortunate to have a deal-hungry client such as Vocus Communications, which completed its $4 billion merger with M2 this year and bought Nextgen Group for $822 million funded by a $652 million equity raising.
Equity capital market volumes were almost half of those in 2015 so it's hard to draw conclusions but the brokers and bankers on the following four awfully performed floats must be feeling ashamed: Kogan, Scottish Pacific, Redbubble and Silver Heritage Group.
The listing this year of poultry producer Inghams Group made many think that the original advice to the owners in early 2013 was under cooked. Investec advised the owners to sell to private equity group TPG for $880 million or 5.5 times earnings. It listed at 8.5 times and has an enterprise value of $1.6 billion. TPG owns half and it also sold off $540 million in property.
BUSINESS GROUPS and OTHERS
The only business group to hit a home run this year was the Institute of Public Affairs. Its executive director John Roskam successfully fought back against the federal government's flawed changes to superannuation.
Jennifer Westacott at the Business Council of Australia, John Brogden at the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Sally Loane at the Financial Services Council failed to cut through the cacophony of noise in 2016. A test of business satisfaction with these groups will be the extent to which there is fresh business funding for the Menzies Research Centre.
Newcomers yet to show their power and influence are James Pearson at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Martin Fahey at the Association of Superannuation Funds.
GetUp! is a winner for showing business and conservative politicians how to run successful grass roots campaigns.
David Whiteley at Industry Super Australia is on the cusp of being a winner for convincing the cross benchers to block reform of industry super fund governance. But the price of victory is the complete loss of credibility for Bernie Fraser's "lost" review of industry super governance.
REGULATORS
Greg Medcraft slipped out of the winners category into the losers category this week after the sale of the ASIC registry was canned. He said that would deliver the government at least $5 billion. ASIC's industry funding model has been approved and ASIC is getting more powers. But his request for another three-year term turned into an 18-month extension.
Former Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens went out on a high. His tenure was marked by sage advice for both sides of parliament. The RBA remains a centre of excellence.
APRA's Wayne Byres was tough but fair when it came to forcing the big four banks to raise more capital. At the same time he pushed back against some of the more extreme requirements of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. His fellow APRA members Helen Rowell and Geoff Summerhayes are winners for their deep understanding of the specialist sectors they cover.
Rod Sims at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was a winner. It is rare for a regulator to advocate for significant legal reform and win. But that is what happened with the reform to section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act, which was recommended by the Harper Review.
POLITICS
Anti-business crusader Senator Sam Dastyari was a loser thanks to assiduous reporting by The Australian Financial Review's Primrose Riordan. It is assumed Dastyari now pays his own bills. It is hard to classify financial services minister Kelly O'Dwyer as a loser despite her embarrassing backflips and notable losses. She has the strongest political fundraising machine of any federal liberal politician thanks to JB Hi-Fi's Richard Murray.
The obvious winners are all the federal Nationals MPs. They came away from the election with their power enhanced. An obvious symbol of that power is the death of coal seam gas in NSW, Victoria and South Australia.
Clive Palmer's major business and his political career both imploded making him a loser of significance.
BIG FOUR BANKS
They escaped Labor's royal commission but at what price? The big four CEOs now face a grilling from David Coleman's banking review committee at least twice a year. They may also find themselves before a new Labor-controlled Senate banking inquiry coming in 2017 as well as Senator Pauline Hanson's proposed inquiry into banking in regional Australia.
There is also the inquiry being conducted by the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Kate Carnell, with help from several government officials.
ECONOMISTS AND STRATEGISTS
There are two standout people in this category.
The loser is the economist at RBS in London, Andrew Roberts, who said 2016 was going to be a "cataclysmic year" and investors should "sell everything". Roberts said the only safe asset was high quality bonds.
By year end it was obvious that Roberts got it completely wrong. Just about every asset class ended the year higher than where it started except for high quality bonds. Even gold was up 12 per cent.
The winner in the highly competitive local economic prediction market was Paul Dales at Capital Economics. He made all the right calls in a market that most chief economists found hard to read.
FUND MANAGERS
The winner is Geoff Wilson from Wilson Asset Management. He delivered strong returns, launched a new fund and continued his strong support for two investment vehicles that help about a dozen charities using funds donated by fund managers.
Two losers were Kerr Neilson at Platinum Asset Management and Phil King at Regal. Neilson's flagship listed vehicle fell 33 per cent and was attacked heavily by hedge funds. Regal's performance in small and large caps fell off a cliff.
But the long-term track record of both men should get them through.
Correction: Corrects to say Galaxy Resources was the best-performing stock in the S&P; ASX200 and not APN News & Media.
