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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2017

22 BUSINESSDAY

Rich lister, boganin war of words

CBDCarolyn Cummins

Collingwood, in Mel-bourne’s inner north,does not scream glam-our, so it’s little wonder

that you will find a self-proclaimed‘‘bogan’’ in a stoush with a rich-lister over a casino-style propertyproposal.

Running smack bang into mil-lionaire developer Tim Gurner, isYarra Council’s Stephen Jolly,who told CBD, the $67 million,383-apartment plan, was ‘‘bettersuited to Macau, Las Vegas, oreven Monaco’’.

‘‘It’s just not the right develop-ment. Collingwood is an artisticcommunity, and the sparklingwhite building looks like a magnetfor every tagger [graffiti artist] inMelbourne,’’ Jolly says.

But being a construction worker,Jolly said he has worked on manysites for many developers, ‘‘nodoubt some owned by Gurner’’.

‘‘I have to pay my bills and feedmy kids like everyone else, I’m nota Nimby [not in my back yard], Ijust think they could have done abetter design.’’

Wheatley returnsHaving cut his teeth at JB Wereand Goldman Sachs in research,then investment bank advisory, be-fore taking a break to reconnectwith his family, property supremoSimon Wheatley has returned in anew role with Fat Prophets’ AngusGeddes, to manage a new real es-tate investment company.

Known as Fat Prophets GlobalProperty Fund, it will provide in-vestors with exposure to a portfo-lio of global real estate listed com-panies, primarily REITs, with theaim of raising up to $220 million.LIC’s are back in favour, evenJames Packer’s Contango AssetManagement forged ahead with aLIC focusing on global stocks.

Clients can be assured there willbe no favour by the managers whenit comes to investing, as Wheatley,who once famously put a sell onFrank Lowy’s Westfield, has alsohired ex-Perennial InvestmentPartners and former MacquarieFunds Management executiveDavid Kivell, known as ‘‘killer’’ for

his scrutiny on REIT managers, asthe independent chairman of theLIC’s investment committee.

It’s online peopleNow CBD would not want anyoneto think that our attendance recordat university was spotless.

However as an arts student thewhole world is one’s classroom, in-cluding the pub. We did think

though the kids heading single filein matching jumpers to the busi-ness school were much better atthe nuts and bolts elements of uni-versity, like turning up to class.

How times have changed, atleast if an exasperated LinkedInpost from a Deakin BusinessSchool lecturer is any guide.

The complaint from associateprofessor Adrian Raftery asked:‘‘Should I use the ole size 16s?’’

‘‘I don’t know about you but mygeneration always showed up forlectures and seminars... Here is myfirst class for 2nd semester whichwas supposed to have started 15mins ago,’’ he said. ‘‘After beingpumped up to give a great class, Iam deflated that they couldn’tbother their arse to show up.

‘‘Students don’t realise thattheir lecturers could be their bestadvocates for getting a job. Whatwould you do if you were in myshoes?’’

Well that question sparked a lotof response with other lecturerssuggesting maybe universitiesneed to change to recognise howthe young ’uns want to be taughtthese days – gasp!

Telstra’s chief spinner JasonLaird replied: ‘‘We don’t knoweach other but I just want to giveyou an ‘attaboy’ and hope you don’tworry that it reflects somethingabout you.’’

Peter Borbiro, who is 14 yearsdeep at the Australian Tax Officeas director risk and intelligencemanagement, says he has had sim-ilar experience when he teaches.

‘‘I had one student turn up to anonline tutorial where I discussedthe final exam ... The subject wasSuperannuation Law. The one stu-dent who did turn up did verywell,’’ he replied.

Can CBD just point out thisBorbiro tutorial was online. It wasonline!

As one financial plannernoted:‘‘Perhaps change the session tohow your parents are spendingyour inheritance and you will notafford that new iPhone 20 in2030?’’

Takata recalls yet more airbagsC a r s a f e t y

Takata has added 2.7 million air bags to their safety recall.

Takata has added another 2.7 mil-lion air bags to the largest car in-dustry recall in the United Statesafter a new hazard was detected intesting.

The company told the NationalHighway Traffic Safety Adminis-tration on Monday that a subset ofits air bag inflaters – ones that relyon calcium sulfate to keep themdry – can, like other versions, rup-ture while deploying the bags, hurl-ing metal shards into vehicles.

Ford, Mazda and Nissan in-stalled the inflaters in vehiclesmanufactured for the US marketfrom 2005 through 2012, accordingto Takata, of Japan. All are on thedriver’s side of the vehicles.

The recall adds to an effort thatwas previously expected to cover70 million Takata air bag inflatersin 42 million vehicles. Takata’sproblems with defective devicesbegan in 2008, when Honda ini-tially recalled 4000 vehicles thatused Takata technology. So far, thesafety agency says, about 17 millionair bags have been replaced in theUnited States.

The deaths of at least 17 peopleworldwide, including 12 in the US,have been linked to Takatainflaters. On Monday, Honda said aperson in Florida died last summerafter a Takata inflater ruptured ina parked 2001 Accord during anattempt to make an unspecified re-pair with a hammer.

Takata and the safety agencysaid they knew of no ruptures re-lated tolatest recall.

Exposure to moisture and tem-

perature fluctuations can degradethe propellant, which contains am-monium nitrate, a volatile com-pound Takata’s inflaters use to de-ploy air bags. The company used avariety of chemical agents to keepthe propellant dry in its devicesover the years, with some combina-tions showing a greater propensityto fail than others, federal regulat-ors said.

The latest recall is the first in-volving the inflaters that use calci-um sulfate as a drying agent. Theinflater can combust in an ‘‘over-aggressive’’ manner, potentiallyrupturing and causing harm, ac-cording to a filing Takata submit-ted to the highway safety adminis-tration.

Takata’s latest admissionbrought fresh criticism of the com-pany in Washington.

In a statement, Takata said it

had decided to recall inflaters thatuse calcium sulfate ‘‘out of anabundance of caution.’’ Thedevices are Takata’s earliest gener-ation of ammonium-nitrateinflaters using calcium sulfate as adrying agent. The company is nowtesting later generations of thosedevices.

Takata pleaded guilty to crimin-al charges in January and agreedto pay a $1 billion fine related to itsfaulty air bag inflater systems.After filing for bankruptcy protec-tion last month, it is selling its as-sets.

The company has said that it ex-pects to fund the air bag repairsthrough the asset sale and that ithas secured financing to ensure itcan continue operations, includingdealing with the defective inflaters,while it restructures.

New York Times

Toshiba in talks to revivesale of $24 billion chip unit

T e c h n o l o g y

Talks with thepreferred consortiumhave stalled.

Toshiba Corp is in talks with West-ern Digital Corp and Taiwan’s Fox-conn, as well as with an alreadypreferred bidder, as it seeks to re-vive a stalled $US18 billion ($24 bil-lion) sale of its chip business, bank-ing sources said on Tuesday.

The Japanese conglomerateconfirmed it was in talks with suit-ors, but did not name them, notingit had been unable to reach anagreement by a self-imposed June28 deadline with its preferred bid-der – a group that includes state-backed fund Innovation NetworkCorp of Japan, the DevelopmentBank of Japan, US private equityfirm Bain Capital and SouthKorean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc.

A representative for WesternDigital declined to comment, and arepresentative for Foxconn, theworld’s largest contract electron-ics maker, formally known as HonHai Precision Industry, was not im-mediately available for comment.

Talks with the preferred consor-tium have stalled over whatsources say are proposals by SKHynix that it helps fund a dealthrough convertible bonds – a stepthat could eventually give it anequity interest in the world’ssecond-largest maker of NANDflash memory chips.

Toshiba doesn’t want its SouthKorean rival to have an equity ormanagement influence in the chipbusiness – a stance it has taken tosatisfy a Japanese governmentkeen to keep Toshiba’s technologyunder domestic control.

Toshiba told its creditor banksat a meeting on Tuesday that it hadbegun talks with alternative bid-ders because talks with the consor-tium had stalled, the bankingsources said.

They did not want to be identi-fied as they were not authorised tospeak publicly on the matter.

‘‘Toshiba had no option but tosay it’s in talks with other suitorsbecause the preferred consortiumis falling through,’’ said another of-ficial involved in the talks.

Toshiba needs to sell its chipbusiness to plug a hole in its bal-ance sheet by the fiscal year-end inMarch, to avoid an automatic deli-sting of its shares from Tokyo’sstockmarket.

The 140-year-old laptops-to-nuclear conglomerate was stillrecovering from a $US1.3 billionaccounting scandal in 2015 whenit was hit by billions of dollars ofcost overruns at its now bankruptUS nuclear unit Westinghousein December.

Toshiba executives have beenreluctant to consider a deal withWestern Digital, with sourcessaying ties between the two com-panies have been strained sinceWestern Digital bought SanDisk,Toshiba’s memory chip businesspartner, in May last year.

Reuters