John Johnston is reeling in Godfreys
There are many strings to 99-year-old John Johnston's bow, or should we say, reel.
He co-founded Godfreys in Melbourne in 1936, and late last week he won over the shareholders after his family-owned Arcade Finance raised its all-cash bid from $13.1 million to $13.7 million.
It's not the first time ''Johnno'' has had a tilt at the group. He came back to hoover up the debt-stricken business with one of Godfreys' bank lenders Nomura in 2011 for less than a third it was sold for five years earlier. An Alan Bond-like moment?
In upping the bid last week, he hoovered up the remaining shares and will now look to delist the stock from the ASX.
Shareholders had until this week to accept the bid, but the sweetened price pushed Johnston to over 50 per cent acceptance.
With the deal pretty well done and dusted it will give the reclusive Johnston some time to pursue his other passion of big game fishing. Perhaps at 99 he may not be hauling the fish out of the water, but CBD is sure he will enjoy sitting on the boat.
In 2002 he was inducted into the International Game Fishing Association's Hall of Fame.
According to his induction, as an angler, he is reputed to be the only person, living or dead, to have caught four different species of game fish over 1000 pounds.
His four ''granders'' include a 1212-pound black marlin off the Great Barrier Reef; a 1076-pound bluefin tuna off Prince Edward Island, Canada; a 1595-pound great white shark off Kangaroo Island, South Australia; and a 1378-pound tiger shark off Moreton Island, Australia.
What may be the highlight of Johnston’s Great Barrier Reef fishing occurred in November 1981. In one afternoon he tagged and released seven black marlin, four of them estimated at more than 1000 pounds and the biggest estimated to be in the 1300 to 1400-pound range.
As any angler will tell you ... the fish was ... that ... big.
Bee stings
Having worked at AMP's troubled financial advice division as the chief risk officer for more than three years, and resigned on May 17, citing "insufficient capacity" to meet the upcoming demands of the role, Pally Bargri, has moved on quickly to be the financial analyst and founder of MuscleHoney.com.au, according to his LinkedIn account.
It says he is mentoring new beekeepers, and the post has a picture of some busy bees.
His post says "this hive host was terrified of bees now she’s getting in there – it’s more than producing quality honey, it’s about being able to have a positive impact on people’s lives, whether it be through providing a quality healthy product, helping people learn about bees or training up hive hosts to become competent beekeepers''.
''I enjoy swapping the corporate suit for the bee suit on the weekends,'' the post says.
There is also a video on the post, where it shows a finger, we presume is Bargri's, touching one of the bees ... it seems he is happy to deal with thousands of stinging insects but not AMP's problems.
Board movements
There is a lot of movements of staff these days with the investment mob, Argo's chairman Ian Martin calling it quits after 14 years as a director, including six years as chairman.
He will be succeeded as chairman by Russell Higgins, who has been a non-executive director of Argo since 2011.
At the same time, Martin has resigned as chairman of Argo Global Listed Infrastructure Limited with Higgins also taking on that role. The release for AGLI says, ''it is the view of the board that AGLI benefits greatly from having Argo’s chairman also serve as chairman of AGLI, due to the close relationship between the two entities and the experience and specialist listed investment company knowledge which that office brings''.
Interestingly, Higgins is also a non-executive director at Telstra, in which Argo is an investor.
Argo just happens to be one of the biggest shareholders in Telstra. It's not a massive stake because Telstra's register is so fragmented, certainly not enough to demand a board seat.
Higgins' appointment comes at a time when Telstra's performance is squarely in the gun and Argo has probably torched quite a bit of dough on it.