QF shares hit $2.00, discuss

[TIMA9X]

We eyed Qantas stake: ex-CEO Geoff Dixon

• by: Damon Kitney
• From: The Australian
• November 26, 2011 12:00AM

FORMER Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon has revealed he and adman John Singleton were among a group of wealthy investors who worked on taking a strategic stake in the airline three months ago, but shelved their plans because of concerns about global instability.

For the first time publicly confirming rumours that have swirled for months, Mr Dixon said a group backed by himself, Mr Singleton and investment banker Mark Carnegie and advised by a global investment bank took a "serious look" at Qantas as its share price slumped to an all-time low.
"All we did was have a look at it," Mr Dixon told The Weekend Australian. "And we looked at it in a serious way.

We had some very top people looking at it and had a lot of people interested. But there are a lot of reasons why we decided to let it go at this stage." The aviation business owned by Mr Dixon, Mr Singleton and Mr Carnegie - Global Aviation Asset Management - and a group of wealthy private investors was looking to seize a strategic stake in the airline as an investment opportunity.

GAAM is run by Greg Woolley, a former Macquarie Bank executive who headed the investment committee behind the failed $11 billion takeover bid for Qantas by the Airline Partners Australia consortium, including David Coe's now failed Allco, private equity group TPG and Macquarie Group.
The bid, in 2007, was famously endorsed by the Qantas board and Mr Dixon as chief executive but collapsed after it was blocked by two key shareholders.
In early August, GAAM sold its aircraft leasing business to New York Stock Exchange-listed FLY Leasing for $US1.4bn ($1.44bn).

Speculation that a private equity bidder was circling Qantas surfaced only weeks later, after John Durie reported in The Australian on August 6 that GAAM may be interested.

In late August, Transport Minister Anthony Albanese publicly declared that any private equity bid for the airline was not in the national interest.
Mr Dixon would not confirm that his play involved private equity. "It involved a lot of individuals not associated with private equity," he said.
But he said with the Qantas share price then at a record low of $1.42, and amid furious union protests against the airline's plans to cut 1000 jobs to stem the bleeding in its international business, GAAM saw an opportunity.

"It wasn't about regime change. I am very supportive of the way (chief executive) Alan (Joyce) and his management team are running it. And I am still very good friends with quite a few of the board members," Mr Dixon said. "It had nothing to do with the way Qantas was being run."
Asked if he had talked to Mr Joyce about the plan, he replied: "What Alan and I talk about should remain confidential."

Mr Dixon said while the group shelved its plans because of the uncertain outlook for Europe and the global economy, it remained interested while the Qantas share price remained low.

The shares closed at $1.45 on Friday, compared to the management buyout price in 2007 of $5.45. Asked if they had given up on their plan, he replied: "No, we still have our company. We still invest. If Qantas settles down well, the share price may get to the point where there is no longer the value there."
Mr Dixon and former Qantas chairman Margaret Jackson have been heavily criticised for endorsing the private equity buyout for Qantas four years ago, which some believe could have sent the airline broke during the subsequent global financial crisis.
The criticism surfaced again in August when speculation of Mr Dixon's involvement in another corporate play for Qantas emerged. But he angrily rejects it.

"People say, what a hide I have to come back," he said. "But what about the people who said no to the $5.45? They weren't doing it to save Qantas. They were doing it because they thought it wasn't enough money.
"They have been absolutely proven wrong. We will never see the likes of it again. By knocking it back, I suppose the shareholders have done $7bn."
Mr Dixon said the "vilification" of Ms Jackson after the failed APA bid was "beyond the pale".

"I have no regrets about it except that Margaret took the bullet," he said.
" Margaret took the full force of this. In typical Australian fashion, they said let's get a scapegoat here. Let's get her out and move her on. She was a terrific chairman."

well well. it's finally out in the open, I remember AJ knew nothing about it when asked at the Senate inquiry 4/11/11.

Background
Also, I noted this story was published elsewhere in today's edition of the Australian. I post without comment.

IT was supposed to be just another drink. Just like any Geoff Dixon and Alan Joyce had shared over many years.

But when the Qantas chief executive fronted up to the bar at Sydney's Rockpool Bar and Grill to meet his mentor on this evening in early May, he had some big news.
Joyce calmly revealed he had just undergone surgery for prostate cancer.
"So I listened for about 15 minutes and said, 'well so have I!',' Dixon, the former Qantas chief executive, tells The Weekend Australian in an exclusive interview.


"I'd just been diagnosed. So we thought there was a problem with the Qantas office!"
In the Dixon household, the news did not go down well. Especially for his wife Dawn.


"The family was a bit shocked. Dawnie of course has her own issues with Parkinson's disease. With all the grace and bloody courage she battles with it. It made that a bit harder for a while," Dixon says.
The now 71-year-old Dixon underwent surgery the week after Joyce in the very same hospital, Sydney's St Vincent's Private. And like Joyce, he has made a full recovery.


"I just dealt with it. I went and had the full operation and had it out. I've got a great doctor in Phillip Stricker," Dixon says.
"It is not something I dwell on. I had to keep moving," he said.
Dawn has not been so lucky.
Early next year, she and the family will face a potentially life-changing moment.


"She has got some pretty big decisions to make. Whether she has a deep brain stimulation (DBS) operation and whether she is a candidate for that. She's got to make that in the next three to four months," Dixon says quietly and slowly.
DBS involves the implantation in the brain of a medical device called a brain pacemaker. It does not cure Parkinson's disease but it can help manage some of its symptoms. While Dawn's condition has been well known to family friends and some members of the business community for many years, Dixon has only rarely spoken about it publicly before.


"We keep it pretty private," he says. But it is clear this conversation is partly therapeutic. The emotion is clear as he fights back a tear and his voice drops to almost a whisper. For years the private battle has been a heavy burden.
"We have been a great support for each other. We are still doing plenty of travelling. We went to Vietnam last week. Argentina earlier in the year. Parkinson's is a pretty debilitating disease. It never really stops. She handles it marvellously," Dixon says.
"She has been great. She has always been great." The Dixons are a close-knit family.


The family is a big investor in ASX-listed technology company Facilitate Digital, run by Dixon's son Ben and chaired by former Fairfax Media executive Stuart Simson. Dixon senior is on the board and the family has taken up the shortfall in two rights issues.


Ben also has some involvement in running one of his father's most prized possessions, the Bellevue Hotel in Paddington in Sydney's east.
Dixon took an interest in the hotel a year ago in a deal with advertising entrepreneur John Singleton, investment banker Mark Carnegie and Lazard.
Pubs have always been a passion for Dixon.


For years he and Sydney publican John Beaumont were the long-term lessees of the Turvey Park Tavern in Wagga Wagga, his and Dawn's home town.
But in the three years since his departure from Qantas, pubs have become big business for Dixon. He, Singleton and Carnegie have been building a pub portfolio buying hotels in inner Sydney.
"I find them fun, I find them interesting. You have to watch you don't become too emotionally involved with them, but I think they are very good businesses," Dixon says.


Dixon is also chairman of Tourism Australia, a director of two James Packer companies, Crown and Consolidated Media, and is on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
But Qantas is never far from his mind. And it became very front of mind in August.


Then the aviation business he owns with Singleton, Carnegie, former Qantas CFO Peter Gregg and the Lieberman family, Global Aviation Asset Management (GAAM), looked to make a play for the airline.
It didn't happen and GAAM has now turned its attention elsewhere.
"We have interests in things and we are looking at a few other issues at the moment," Dixon says. But he will never say never on Qantas, at least while the airline's share price remains in the doldrums.
While speculation of the play is said to have angered Alan Joyce at the time, Dixon says they remain "quite close".


"We would have a drink every couple of weeks," he says.
"We get on very well. We are, as he said the other day, very left of centre in our politics. Do I give him some advice? Very rarely. If he asks my opinion, I give it. When we get together we talk principally about airlines."
So do they often have differences of opinion?


"We don't disagree all that much. I might tell him he is not marketing the place properly but I don't really," Dixon says with a smile.
So will he ever return to the board the way former chief James Strong did after a time away?


"Never, never. I have moved on from it. To me, as much as I enjoyed it, and I did really have a love for Qantas, aviation is just another business," he says.
It might be three years since he held down a full-time job but Dixon still keeps up his hectic schedule. The legendary 5am starts have become 5.30am for a weights session and a walk. The morning run is a thing of the past.
"The knees are starting to give way," he says.


Asked what he did to celebrate his 70th birthday last year, his reply is blunt. "Nothing. I tried to forget it," he says with a smile before admitting he had a "small thing with the family".


"I do like work. The pubs are good fun. I am interested professionally and personally in tourism. I believe I will keep working while I am breathing.