It has been a very good day for one of Australia's wealthiest fund managers, Hamish Douglass, who lifted his net worth by more than $227 million as the sun rose on Tuesday.
The bonanza was delivered via restricted stock that converted into 10.2 million common shares in the investment group he co-founded, the Magellan Financial Group. The shares are currently trading upwards of $22 each.
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It has been a long wait for Douglass.
He received the restricted shares in the lead-up to the financial crisis in 2008.
The previous year, Douglass and Magellan co-founder Chris Mackay found themselves in a bit of a bind.
Mackay and Douglass provided their services to Magellan via a management services agreement (MSA) with their private company, NPH.
Their company was about to make a lot of money - even though their Magellan investors, including James Packer and Victoria's wealthiest woman, Naomi Milgrom, had not seen the benefit of their performance.
"Chris and I initiated the review of the MSA as we were very likely to share in significant performance fees before Magellan was fully established and clearly successful," said Douglass in the October 2007 statement explaining the rationale for Magellan's takeover of NPH.
Part of the consideration for Douglass was 10.2 million Class B shares, with strings attached.
If Douglass had left before July 1, 2012, he would have received just one Magellan share on Tuesday, which would have lifted his net worth by $22.33.
Not that it would have mattered. Douglass was worth about $505 million before his latest windfall, according to the BRW Rich List, and does not have expensive tastes.
In 2013 he told Bloomberg: "I try not to have a lot of trappings of money around our kids and our life. I do this because I love what I'm doing."
This included his choice of chariot.
"I like really cheap cars and old ones - I mean old ones, not collectors' ones," he said. "I have an old Nissan Navara truck, which I have never washed."
His family does have its needs, though.
Magellan was forced to withdraw a resolution before last month's shareholder meeting seeking approval for a $10 million termination benefit for Douglass in the event of him suffering an "unsound mind, incapacity or death."
Douglass said he ended up agreeing with some investors who asked why their company should pay for the insurance contract of their wealthy CEO?
"I can afford to pay for my own insurance," Douglass concluded.
Glass half empty
Guess which media company chairman has offered to halve his pay to help company coffers in the face of declining advertising revenue?
John "Harto" Hartigan told the Prime Media Group's annual general meeting held on Tuesday morning that he is taking a 50 per cent cut to his chairman's fees, effective from July 1, 2016.
The decision by the former head of Rupert Murdoch's local media empire will go a small way to patching up Prime's ailing performance after it reported an 18 per cent decline in core post-tax profit.
Hartigan's annual feel in 2015-16 was $181,981, which means he will take home about $91,000, on par with the company's other non-executive directors such as Cass O'Connor and Peter Macourt.
Other media chairmen, let's not mention any names, must be hoping this sort of sacrifice is not contagious.
It may have proved handy in one regard, shareholders overwhelmingly approved Prime's remuneration report after delivering a first strike at last year's AGM.
Meanwhile, chief executive Ian Audsley (on a total package of $1.4 million with no hint of a pay cut), gave a fiery speech about the need for the government to pass the media reform bill.
"The reality is that we are operating with a set of regulations for a market that no longer exists. There is no such a thing as a 'regional television market'. This effectively disappeared with the advent of streaming. Metropolitan Australia and regional Australia are now one television market – augmented by the internet," Audsley told shareholders.
"Ultimately, the 'market' created by the Hawke government in the late 1980s and perpetuated by subsequent governments, which used to sustain three local commercial TV stations, two local radio stations and a local newspaper, is failing us. We have reached a tipping point. It is now on the cusp of being public policy failure."
Harto obviously does not need the money, and won't mind the fact that the campaign for media reform might do him out of a job.
He could then find a directorship to match the criteria he set out after stepping down as News Ltd's chief executive in 2011.
Harto promised he would not take up any company directorships unless they held the board meetings at Bondi and offered beer.
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