Herd on the Terrace: Adam Simpson’s new gig and the latest twist at East Rockingham waste to energy plant

It’s payday on the Terrace amid a fresh legal twist in the war over trouble-plagued East Rockingham Resource Recovery Facility. That is, in English, a waste to energy plant. Kanadevia Inova — a bilingual rebranding of Japanese firm Hitachi —this week lodged a Supreme Court bid to stop receivers from Cor Cordis gobbling up an $18 million bank guarantee for the project. The waste plant was supposed to power on early in 2023 but became a bit of a dumpster fire thanks to construction delays, and the business went under last year. Just about every insolvency firm in town has had a crack in some form or other. FTI were receivers but got the boot when Acciona bought out secured creditors weeks later — close to full price, mind you. PWC had a brief spell at the helm before Cor Cordis got the gig. Meanwhile, KordaMentha remain administrators. The Bull reckons Acciona holds the whip hand in the whole circus after snagging the debts, believed to be north of $300m. The Spanish giant is in every corner of the deal: builder, now lead creditor, and hotly tipped as a bidder to nab the plant from the jaws of death. CorCordis will need to whittle down potential buyers in months ahead. As for that court fight, we reckon the toe-cutters are confident they can hold onto the $18m haul, but leave that to Lady Justice to decide. All these manoeuvres put a new spin on the phrase “turning trash into treasure” — for the Terrace’s suits, at least. He’s a mountain Lion It’s EOFY clearance time at Liontown Resources — all lieutenants of chief Tony Ottaviano must go! On June 30, the lithium miner announced chief operating officer Adam Smits and chief financial officer Jon Latto had tendered their resignations. Smits got quite the fawning send-off from Ottaviano in the announcement, “I will miss Adam . . . they don’t make them like you anymore Adam.” Latto’s farewell was more reserved, and unlike Smits, there is no permanent replacement lined up yet. This got the Bull’s horns tingling because CFOs are notoriously one of the first quendas to flee a sinking ship. Ottaviano, to his credit, was good enough this week to tell a HOTT operative why Latto had left Liontown beyond the vagueries of the ASX announcement. “John had just come back from a walking hike around the Dolomites in Italy, and he came back into budget session with end of year work and all those sorts of things,” Ottaviano said. “And he too said, ‘Look Tony. I need a break. I enjoyed my holiday’.” Liontown has $700m-odd of liabilities while the lithium price remains in the toilet. So, The Bull agrees with Latto, trekking Italian mountains sounds a lot more appealing than climbing over that debt mountain. Simpson steps up West Coast Eagles premiership coach Adam Simpson is off and running in the boardroom after the listing of Geoff Lewis’ latest corporate venture. Simpson is one of three directors on Lewis’ StepChange, a consultancy specialising in tech and strategy that debuted on the ASX on Thursday after a near $15m raising. Lewis and Simpson have known each other since the latter’s playing days at North Melbourne when Lewis was a board member of the AFL club and a major sponsor through his IT company, ASG. The entrepreneur doesn’t hide his admiration of Simpson’s leadership credentials, telling The Bull his involvement in StepChange is “a win win”. “He’s a remarkable leader and a really impressive individual,” Lewis says. “I’ve known him a long time and got to really respect his understanding of leaders and high-performance outcomes. I expect he’s going to add to a lot of value to the leaders in our business, and obviously he’s going to experience public company markets.” Lewis pocketed $35m from the $349m buyout of ASG by Japan’s Nomura Research Institute in late-2016, floating another IT company, Cosol, three years later. As of Friday, Cosol, which focuses on enterprise asset management and systems, was capitalised at about $112m. StepChange’s 20c shares were trading at 18c a day after the debut, revaluing the group at $32m. A Simpson family company is listed with 1.87 million shares, or 1.2 per cent of StepChange.

Herd on the Terrace: Adam Simpson’s new gig and the latest twist at East Rockingham waste to energy plant

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