NOT SO PHYSICAL
Everyone who has spent half a second in the same room as Newton-John will be bringing the memory to everyone this week. But SMH/Age reader Dave Miller takes the cake. Working as a personal trainer in 1984 at Kerry Packer’s exclusive Hyde Park Club, he was impressed by celebrity attendees such as West Indian cricketers Viv Richards and Joel Garner, but couldn’t believe his luck when he was asked to do individual fitness sessions. in Newton-John.
He was struck by her warmth, kindness, beauty, but also… her lack of physicality. Miller’s other client, former cricket captain Tony Greig, would turn “as red as a beetroot” in training, but Newton-John was the exact opposite, he says, rarely sweating. “I had visions of the Physical movie clip… But no way. He didn’t try too hard, he didn’t need to.
BE SUED
Lawyers are a hardworking bunch. None more so than the defamation lawyers who work alongside the plaintiffs.
On Thursday, Sydney silk Sue ChrysanthouSC, wrote to the NSW Department of Communities and Justice, complaining about the Defamation Act reforms, which have been in place for more than a year.
Chrysanthou’s views are no shock: arguing that charities should be able to sue more easily, lamenting that claimants must wait a full 28 days before they can start litigation and complaining that the new process is so complex that the lawyer often has to charge $10,000. to write the first letter. What a horror!
You have to admire the persistence. After failing to get their way through the two-year reform process, and after the new laws were enacted in April 2021, Chrysanthou and his cohort circulated a briefing note to state parliamentarians condemning the changes as to “fundamentally flawed” and asking them. to be scrapped.
Undeterred by a rejection from the NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman, Chrysanthou & Co. had a meeting with the department in December last year to have another complaint. It has taken seven months to follow up this meeting with last week’s letter.
The delay is perhaps unsurprising as Chrysanthou must have been very busy unsuccessfully appealing a costs order in relation to her conflict in acting for both. I Dyera potential witness to the now infamous rape charge Christian Porter, and for Porter himself. (At least it only has to go halfway with Porter’s secret donor.)
“UNHAPPY MARRIAGE”
Hard to imagine, but it’s a tough time to be an Australian fund manager right now. Looking across the majors listed on the ASX, share prices are falling.
The worst performer is undoubtedly Magellan, thrown into chaos following the abrupt departure of star founder Hamish Douglass at the end of last year.
Not far behind is the recently merged Regal Funds Management.
Sydney investment guru Phil King said it was a good time to short the stock, when his company merged with bad boy Robert Luciano’s VGI earlier this year.
Maybe now he wants his own company to run. Regal shares are down 54 percent over the past 12 months, which has only continued to fall since the tie-up.
CBD has obtained a recent note to clients, signed by King and Regal managing director Brendan O’Connor, which shows six of Regal’s 10 funds fell into negative returns in the six months to June.
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Clients were told that short-term pain is “never nice”, you don’t say that, but never fear because happier times are just around the corner.
While hedge fund managers are no strangers to volatile times, some market watchers aren’t so convinced.
“Their core fund has fallen off a cliff, the share price has been decimated,” said a well-placed source in the CBD. “It’s going to be a pretty unhappy marriage.”
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