This guy gets so much positive news coverage and I just don’t get it. It is all hype with no substance. Lets look at the record

Virgin Cola – Business set up in Australia for a short period to compete against Coke and Pepsi FAILURE.

Virgin Credit Cards – First attempt went out of business FAILURE

Virgin Formula One Team – Catosprophic FAILURE

Virgin Brides – Bridal wear company formed in 1996. Closed in 2007 due to the company not being able to make any profit because of “an intensively competitive bridal market” (who would have thought). FAILURE

Virgin Cars – Sold cars on-line. Needless to say FAILURE

Virgin Gallactic – Have not seen one tourist go to another planet FAILURE

And my personal favourite Australia’s worst airline Virgin Blue, an airline started on the smell of an oily rag with some real purdy air hostesses. They hyped this half smoked cigar to the Australian stock market for about $2.60 a share and many-a-moron fell for it. I give credit to Branson for getting out of this company when Patrick’s came to him with a large offer for his majority ownership.

Ordinary shareholders were left to watch their share price drop from these dizzying heights to the meger 31 cents that they are today. They even had the honour of kicking in another 230 million dollars at the end of last year to keep the planes in the air.

Sooner or later Virgin Blue will go the way of the other companies on this list FAILURE.

I am not sure what Sir Richards next business plan is but rest assured if he were to take a nice big steamy dump in the middle of the Queen Street mall and then put a ‘Virgin Turd’ brand on it Peter Beattie would be there to try and secure this new company’s corporate headquarters, the media would report on the ‘Grand Opening’ with unparalleled coverage and a long list of ‘sophisticated investors’ would be lining up to purchase a portion of said steamer

The guy is a glorified sales rep, don’t believe the hype.

Babcock & Brown’s conjuring act was laid bare in the Federal Court this week, write Michael Evans and Danny John.

The opening questions appeared innocuous enough. You were the managing director of Babcock & Brown? Yes.

Between 2004-07, you were variously described in Babcock & Brown annual reports as its managing director, chief executive officer and group chief executive? Yes. But when Phil Green, the former Babcock & Brown boss appeared at a liquidator’s hearing in the Federal Court into last year’s $3 billion corporate collapse, it took just minutes to strip away appearances and reveal the private reality of what had been a very public face.

Question: Was there ever a formal resolution to appoint you MD? Answer: I don’t recall.

Were you ever employed by Babcock & Brown Ltd? – My employment contract was with Babcock & Brown International.

Was it a written contract? – I believe so. Now that you mention it I may have been employed by Babcock & Brown Australia. But I was Group CEO.

Over two days, Green would in effect admit that very little about Babcock & Brown was as simple as it appeared. Peter Wood, counsel for the liquidator Deloitte, put to Green that Babcock (B&B) was nothing more than a ‘‘filter’’ for a subsidiary, a private vehicle called Babcock & Brown International Pty Ltd (BIPL). Green agreed that appeared to be the legal position.

B&B was a holding company, a conduit used to raise money from the public markets to fund the activities of a privately held company that housed the group’s assets. It raised $550million in a public float then gave the money to the private company BIPL to invest. It raised millions more in a notes issue, then gave it to BIPL. It received dividends from BIPL to pay its shareholders.

Wasn’t this structure unusual? – I don’t believe so.Why was it done like that ? – For the capital gains tax purposes of major international investors.

From a $5 per share float in 2005 dubbed by Macquarie Equities as the ‘‘IPO of the century’’, Babcock’s share price hit dizzying heights of $34 amid billion-dollar infrastructure deals loaded with debt.

Its stellar float delivered millions in advisory fees to the broker UBS, and its rise led to comparisons with Australia’s largest investment bank, Macquarie Group. But as the ripples of the global financial crisis spread around the world in late 2007, a slow train wreck began to unfold that is only now being fully detailed in public.
At the heart of the structure sat Green – the managing director of B&B, director of the private company and member of the two-man sub-committee that decided how much in dividends BIPL should pay to B&B, of which he was one of the largest shareholders.

B&B’s collapse led to an astonishing loss of face for Green – removal from the board of the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust and resentment from within the eastern suburbs community over lost investor funds.

And now, as WeekendBusiness can reveal, watching Green’s evidence from the gallery were officials from the litigation funder IMF Australia, which is now considering a Babcock & Brown class action case.

THAT exchange over Green’s job status speaks volumes about the structure on which the whole Babcock & Brown empire was built. From hours of court testimony emerges a fascinating picture of corporate life within a big Australian company where some of the most important board decisions in effect were the province of the chief financial officer and were delegated to a two-man special committee that approved matters such as dividend payments and year-end accounts in meetings lasting little more than 10 minutes.

Here was a business with an executive chairman based in California, with a large chunk of operations in the US and Europe being run out of Sydney by a chief executive whose personality dominated those around him.
Green embodied B&B – both publicly and privately. Inside B&B, the man who shunned neckties for casual wear could do no wrong. He was one of two directors, the other being the ASX Ltd director and former senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers Michael Sharpe, who sat on that ‘‘special purpose’’ board committee that took the key decisions.

In fact, it was two committees in one – a structure that mirrored the way in which the Babcock group had been set up and operated. Like their fellow board directors at B&B, Green and Sharpe were also on the board of BIPL.
But in the witness box over two days dressed in dark suit and tie, Green rejected repeated suggestions from the liquidator’s counsel that he had any conflict of interest.

Green and Sharpe were also the two men on a special purpose committee of the private company that took the decisions on dividend policy and approving the company’s accounts.

Every six months the board would act upon the half-year finance report from the chief financial officer, Michael Larkin, and recommended what dividends be paid. Normally that would be done at the behest of the board of a publicly listed company. But in the case of Babcock the power lay in BIPL since it earned the money and B&B was just the recipient of what the privately run business chose to hand over to it.

As revealed in court this week, BIPL and its sub-committee would decide the profit figure, declare its own dividend and then hand B&B’s share to the listed holding company.

Wood picked away at Green to reveal how Babcock determined its dividends until the full picture emerged. The listed company would close its books on the half and full year. Then some weeks later the private vehicle would declare a dividend to pay to the public vehicle. The public vehicle would then declare a dividend at its results. But crucially it was from money that had not been booked in the relevant period.

As first Green and then a red-faced Ernst & Young auditing partner, Mark O’Sullivan, acknowledged to the court that the Corporations Act required dividends to be paid from profit. But that small issue seems to have escaped the boys at B&B and BIPL – and its auditors who failed to pick up on what had become established practice.

As for the outside world, investors, regulators, advisers and many analysts were none the wiser since what they were presented with was the public face of the Babcock empire, albeit one that mirrored the private entity.
To all intents and purpose they were one. Then the empire started to unravel.

It was late 2007, and tensions were growing in the Babcock & Brown camp. From his California bunker, the chairman, Jim Babcock, fired off an email to Green.

The long-term partnership between Green and Babcock, central to the business, was fracturing. Babcock was becoming more cautious and conservative, in the threat of a global recession, suggesting there were better, smarter uses of the company’s money.

Green, who had only months earlier outbid Macquarie for the assets of the Perth energy company Alinta had also seen a preliminary proposal to buy the collapsed Allco Finance Group, designed to allow the financial engineer a face-saving exit. But it was one B&B chose not to pursue.

Babcock also emailed the director Elizabeth Nosworthy expressing concerns about Green’s links to the margin-lending broking specialist Tricom, although Green told the court she had not raised it as an issue with him.
But outside, it remained business as usual.
In its profit guidance in February 2008 Babcock & Brown assured the market that its ‘‘conservative low-risk’’ business model would serve it well in challenging times. It forecast a full-year profit of $750million.
The liquidator’s hearings this week have provided the first opportunity to compare what was happening inside the company to what the market was being told.

In the background, tension and discontent was growing.

While Green remained optimistic that the Babcock group would weather the growing financial storm engulfing the world, the signs were already there that the good times for B&B were over.

Jim Babcock’s warning in December 2007 of a global recession was to prove somewhat prophetic.
The tight squeeze – and then disappearance – of cheap credit cut off a large proportion of B&B’s lifeblood, leaving it without finance to acquire assets and, more importantly, depriving would-be buyers of its assets cash to fund their purchases.

Another consequence was that the price of assets started to crash – good news if you had money to buy, but bad if you needed to sell. And Babcock, which relied on deal-making and asset churning to lighten the load on its balance sheet and bring in the profits, was now a seller.

The first sign that B&B was in trouble came not long after at the end of March. Wood challenged Green if B&B’s guidance from February was not ‘‘wildly optimistic’’.

The 2008 financial year did not start well, with Babcock making a first-quarter loss – of $21million – but Green was not that concerned, as he said in court this week. The push to complete deals by the December year-end always meant that the immediate quarter afterwards was always a lot quieter, he said.

Despite the growing problems on financial markets and Babcock’s own sliding share price, activity picked up enough in the second quarter to persuade Green and his colleagues that the 2008 year would still turn out to be a good one. So much so that both Babcock and Green publicly reaffirmed their earlier profit guidance of another record result at B&B’s annual meeting on May 30.

“We remain absolutely confident in our basic business model, which is supported by strong global dynamics and prospects in all of our core business areas,” Babcock said in his address.

“Therefore, I am happy to reaffirm that B&B remains on track to deliver net profit after tax of at least $750million.”

However, the second quarter and first-half result – which was not due to be declared for some weeks – did not make such attractive reading even though the group had returned to profit by the end of June.
By then Larkin was reporting likely net earnings of $251million, which left a lot to do in the last six months of the year, although that was traditionally B&B’s stronger half given the previous rush to get deals done and the profit in the door. Green felt at the time that the result would put the group well on the way to achieving the $750million.

The key to a better second half was going to be the sale of the group’s wind farm business in Europe, for which it was looking to make a $650million gain on its investment. The team handling the sale was confident it would pull off the deal, and its optimism was enough to persuade an increasingly jittery Green in early June that the company should not retract or qualify its profit forecast.

With the financial crisis in full swing and some of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks teetering on the precipice, Green sent an email to his most senior managers on June 13. ‘‘Give the dramatic turn of events over the past few days, we need to go into a trading halt or withdraw our profit guidance,’’ he wrote.
B&B also needed more headroom on its financing. Its sliding share price was close to triggering a breach in the market capitalisation clause in its banking covenants. If such news was made public it would put more pressure on its stock, particularly in light of the troubles being experienced by Allco Finance Group, and hit confidence.

But the wind farm sales team was adamant it would meet its planned deadline and get a good price. Despite Green’s concerns, he opted to say nothing publicly about the profit forecast. Instead, B&B issued a market update to investors on June 16 seeking to alleviate their concerns about “incorrect and misleading” comments about its debt facility and a decision the previous week by the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the company’s credit rating.

Asked by Wood why nothing was said until the shock statement to the ASX in early August announcing a full-year profit downgrade and a poor first-half result, Green said senior B&B executives in fact qualified guidance in a presentation to a UBS conference on June 25. But again, that was opaque. The group’s present performance was summarised on one page of a 40-page presentation and which itself contained just three short bullet points.

Of those, one dealt with the discussions with the group’s banking syndicate about its debt facility, which were said to be “progressing well”, while a second baldly stated that the full-year profit guidance had only been reconfirmed at the annual general meeting less than a month before.

The comments about the forecast included the normal caveats and at the time were not considered by investors to be anything out of the ordinary, particularly considering the rather extraordinary events affecting financial markets worldwide.

“The 2008 guidance is subject to the resolution and impact of current discussions around our corporate debt facilities, market conditions and outcomes of the asset sale program,” the brief update said. Little more than six weeks later shareholders discovered how badly B&B’s world had imploded.

Not only would the company report a half-year profit as much as 40per cent below the $250million of the corresponding period a year before but it would also miss its planned annual target by at least $100million.

The reason: a significant write-down in the value of its equity investments and its core assets, which was to be the first of many and was to culminate in an impairment charge of $4.6billion in the final 2008 accounts that led to a mega-loss of $5.3billion.

“The volatile global capital market conditions have made and continue to make business conditions uncertain and forecasting in the short term difficult,” a chastened Green said in a statement.

Those words signalled the beginning of the end.
He was asked to resign, and on August 21 he quit and was replaced as chief executive by Larkin, while the group’s co-founder, Babcock, resigned as executive chairman, to be replaced by his deputy, Nosworthy. So too did Green’s close ally, the non-executive director Sharpe, the chairman of the board’s audit and risk management committee, who stood down on health grounds.

Green stayed as a non-executive director. But within a month he had left B&B – a decision he now says he made because of an increasingly difficult stand-off with his former colleagues over attempts to save the group.

Green wanted to bring in an equity partner and sell the company. But Nosworthy, Larkin and the remaining directors had been opposed, preferring to bunker down and with the help of the group’s bankers try to trade their way out of trouble and emerge smaller but alive.

There was no going back, for them or Green, who chose to exit completely.

As he retreated to his Point Piper mansion, B&B first tottered and then in a painful and excruciating seven-month slow death involving talks with its bankers toppled into administration.

Among the final indignities, the outside world then learnt that B&B had agreed not to wind up its subsidiary BIPL to recover the $600million debt that is now the subject of the liquidators’ hearings. That allowed BIPL’s lenders to recover their money from the operating business they were keeping on life-support and now run by Larkin.

One line of inquiry from the liquidator more than any other questioned the use of B&B funds as the company teetered on the brink.

In February 2008 Green rejected reports that some B&B staff held extensive margin loans over their shares.
‘‘This is total nonsense, it’s market rumour and it’s absolute rubbish’’, he said.

It was another factor weighing on the B&B share price because those stakes held by staff and executives risked liquidation in the case of a margin call.
Following B&B’s 2007 Alinta acquisition, questions had been asked about Green’s links to Tricom’s boss Lance Rosenberg.

When Tricom floundered in the market rout, Green recommended B&B help out the company – a move, he said this week, that was aimed at recovering B&B’s shares and so avoid further downward selling pressure on its stock that had been targeted by short sellers.

Until this week Green’s personal holdings at risk in Tricom had never been revealed.

As emerged in court, Green held 800,000 B&B shares and other investments totalling $15million inside Tricom, which were used to secure a further $22.5million in margin loans to two of Green’s family companies.

The fact remains that as B&B wobbled, its boss recommended a $35million financial lifeline for a broker in which he personally had $15million in assets trapped.

*Free 30 min pre show prior to all plays. No prelims for this UFC event

Chael ‘Freckles’ Sonnen is putting out some more gold here with his predictions about UFC 117.

My mate Freckles lost his shit (again) recently and this time it was in an important business meeting. Beautifully there were some in-genius friends available to record the carnage for everyone to enjoy on the interweb.

Here tis

2. In the hotel rooms they do not have fridges. If you want a cold drink at anytime during your stay it involves either money or a whole production of planning including advanced knowledge of said thirst, an ice bucket and ice + plus cooling time.

3. They drive on the wrong side of the road. It makes no sense that they chose to do this but they did, Niffs!

4. I can’t understand any of them. On TV they are very eloquent but you try and ask a US customs officer why he tipped your jocks out all over the conveyer belt during a “random” bag search and see if you can decipher the niff.

5. “Random” Bag searches. I have now been to the USA twice and had my bag ‘randomly’ searched three freakin times. Apparently my luggage is made out of lead.

6. Food. You hear America is a great place for food and home of the hamburger. Bull friggen crap I say. I have had better hamburgers from roadkill. I await the arrival of a Ney York strip so I will let you know if things improve but so far bubcass.

7. Tipping is so STUPID. How much? What for? When? To who? It is soooo awkward.

8. There money is all the same colour and nearly identical under pressure tipping situations. You end up tipping some niff nuff 20 dollars for opening a door for you.

9. Locations of convenient stores. The term convenient means nothing whatsoever. My first day here I recovered from the flights by walking around this big ass mall near my hotel. I walked literally kilometers from start to end, side to side and floor to floor and not one single store was a convenient store. Sure there were some good shops but you could not find a shop selling milk, bread, softdrinks, beer or any of the normal major food groups that is essential for basic survival. Well this specifically for Houston Texas. I feel like Bear Grylls trying to survive here.

10. The week I am here in Houston (or as I call it Hotston cause its apparently located on the surface of the sun) the Houston Astros have chosen to play all there games of baseball away from the city thus ruining my long time dream of watching a game of major league baseball live. Thanks Astro’s thanks mates.

Honourable mention. They use different holes in the wall for the electricity. Just niffy.

Apparently in 2004 a Brisbane chap called John Shiels registered ‘Come On!’ and accompying fist pump with the intention of creating a mark “representative of all Australian sports people.”

Whilst Leyton and his team thought that they should have the rights to this because ‘Come On!’ is associated with the tennis star in the eyes of the public the decision suggests that just because he has been doing it for a long time doesn’t mean he owns it.

As far as I can tell Lleyton will need to come up with a new catchphrase or pay a royalty fee to Mr Sheils. GOLD!

He could be in the middle of the biggest game of his career against Roger Federer, fighting back from 2 sets to nil down, and a sensational cross court shot results in the normal Leyton “Come On!” only now he will have to pay a fee!!

What about when he is at home with the wife and he pulls of some bodacious boning and gives a bit of a “Come On!” will Mr Shiels have lawyers staged outside the Hewitt homestead ready to jump in with a cease and desist order for inappropriate use of a trademarked catchphrase?

I sure hope so! Bec would be loving it!

It does seem a bit niffy that some no name niff nuff can trademark an action that a national sportsman coined. Optunistic unfairness perhaps? But then again Lleyton is hardly short of a dollar so it may be just a case of alls fair in sport and war.

I will now be keeping my eye out for catchphrases I can steel….. I mean trademark.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification, because I am out of
the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

3. Sorry to have missed you, but I’m at the doctor’s having my brain and
heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.

4. I will be unable to delete all the emails you send me until I return
from vacation. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order
it was received.

5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the
first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

6. The email server is unable to verify your server connection.
Your message has not been delivered. Please restart your computer and
try sending again.
(The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see who did this
over and over and over….)

7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system.
You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in
approximately 19 weeks.

8. Hi, I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.

9. I’ve run away to join a different circus.

10. I will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical reasons.
When I return, please refer to me as ‘Lucille’ instead of Steve

Apparently today was the day Dr Emmett “Doc” Brown & Marty ‘shaky’ McFly were supposed to show up and say ‘No’ to Griff. Maybe this happened today I don’t know, but one thing I am sure of is that they were not scheduled to show up for another 5 freakin years.

Media misrepresented date

Actual schedule date

The other issue is that the flying cars, automated weather and 3D holograms in the street are not yet in major production. If Doc Brown and Marty are to show up they will be expecting these so our governments had better pull their finger out. Nobody wants an upset Doc Brown, nobody.