Iconic rapper Pitbull's musical admonition to "check your pipes" and confirm they're the healthy type has proven particularly relevant to tenants at Perth's Central Park skyscraper. We're told there was a bit of a deluge — or trickle, depending on who you ask — in the 226-metre building in late April after a pipe leak. And it was quite the waterworks. Up to five floors were knocked out by the flooding.
The Bull understands the source — pun intentional — of the trouble was related to an office fit-out. No structural issues with the building were identified. Good news for plenty of staff scoring the joyous chance to work from home for a day or two while the place got mopped up. Great for local brunch joints in Perth's suburbs!
Central Park is owned by Perron Group and Fraser Group, and management told us they had "addressed the situation immediately, allowing all tenants to resume normal business operations." All good then! Looking forward to visiting the new internal pool next time we're on the Terrace.
Unicorn Returns
Dalkeith's famed Jutland Parade has a new resident after Perth startup entrepreneur Xavier Orr scooped up a riverside home. Orr is among WA's biggest tech success stories and the company he co-founded, Advanced Navigation, hit unicorn status earlier this year in a March capital raising valuing the business north of $1 billion.
Sydney-based Advanced helps robots navigate in places without GPS, like the bottom of the sea or on the moon, and has counted Boeing and NASA as customers. It has some high-profile backing, too, with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull the chair.
Orr told The Bull he would work with a local architect to draw up plans for a redevelopment ahead of a permanent move back to Perth from Sydney. "That property really appealed to me," he said, adding it would be a good place for a family. It's a beautiful slice of the world.
Hartanto Properties' Eric Hartanto inked the $8.1 million deal, his second on the Parade in just a few months. He said direct access to the beach and a boatshed had pushed the price to what could be a record per square metre on the street. "It's very rare on Jutland that you can get direct access to the water," Hartanto said.
Hey Jules
The latest attempt to pay rich rewards to Jules Pemberton has exposed the palaver that is executive remuneration at ASX-listed companies. The latest chapter started in November when the NRW chief and brief Home & Away star was denied one million long-term performance share rights worth up to $3 million.
Grumpy proxy advisers effectively voted it down at the meeting and also delivered an eighth-consecutive strike against NRW's remuneration report. That Olympic-record achievement automatically triggered another motion to spill the board that was overwhelmingly rejected by those same proxy advisers, so go figure what the point was.
Back to Pembo's pay. NRW held an extraordinary general meeting earlier this week to push through those same performance rights worth the same amount. After some very marginal performance hurdle tweaks following "engagement" with the proxies, the vote swung at the EGM. So, at a meeting at Brookfield Place that lasted all of four minutes, likely cost a fair few grand to put on, and had one shareholder in attendance, Pemberton finally got his multimillion-dollar bonus scheme to add to his base pay of $1.75 million and short-term bonus of $1.4 million.
Thank goodness! No more beans on toast at the Pembertons' Applecross abode. As for the proxies, maybe they just yearn for a little board attention?
A Sprinkle of Fun
Operatives were left scratching their heads this week after the sudden disappearance of Johan van Vuuren as chief financial officer of IGO just weeks into the job. We assumed he took one look at transfer pricing deals around Greenbushes lithium mine and legged it. But a helpful internet sleuth has given us a better steer. A recent presentation by the miner lists corporate values that include "ignite the spark", "never stand still" and the particularly moist "run through sprinklers". Perhaps van Vuuren would just prefer not to get wet.
