Can MinRes' cleanskin chairman tame the Chris Ellison show?
Mineral Resources founder Chris Ellison isn't known to be a retiring type. On analyst calls and in interviews, the mining industry veteran is not afraid of browbeating anyone who questions his management style. His blunt-speaking approach is said to be no more refined in the boardroom.
It is into this boardroom that Malcolm Bundey, a Melbourne-based packaging industry expert with no mining experience, will enter as non-executive chairman of the highly indebted West Australian company in July.
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The Advertiser
5 hours ago
- The Advertiser
Japanese company's moon lander 'likely to have crashed'
Japanese company ispace says its uncrewed moon lander has likely crashed onto the moon's surface during its lunar touchdown attempt, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has not been able to communicate with the spacecraft after a likely hard landing, ispace said in a statement on Friday. The company's livestream of the attempted landing showed Resilience's flight data was lost less than two minutes before the planned touchdown time earlier on Friday. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900km from the moon's north pole, and was on an hour-long descent from lunar orbit. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design is mostly unchanged in Resilience, the company has said. Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3m-high lander and the microwave-sized rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing images of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with US space agency NASA. Japan in 2024 became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander, although in a toppled position. Japanese company ispace says its uncrewed moon lander has likely crashed onto the moon's surface during its lunar touchdown attempt, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has not been able to communicate with the spacecraft after a likely hard landing, ispace said in a statement on Friday. The company's livestream of the attempted landing showed Resilience's flight data was lost less than two minutes before the planned touchdown time earlier on Friday. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900km from the moon's north pole, and was on an hour-long descent from lunar orbit. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design is mostly unchanged in Resilience, the company has said. Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3m-high lander and the microwave-sized rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing images of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with US space agency NASA. Japan in 2024 became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander, although in a toppled position. Japanese company ispace says its uncrewed moon lander has likely crashed onto the moon's surface during its lunar touchdown attempt, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has not been able to communicate with the spacecraft after a likely hard landing, ispace said in a statement on Friday. The company's livestream of the attempted landing showed Resilience's flight data was lost less than two minutes before the planned touchdown time earlier on Friday. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900km from the moon's north pole, and was on an hour-long descent from lunar orbit. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design is mostly unchanged in Resilience, the company has said. Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3m-high lander and the microwave-sized rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing images of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with US space agency NASA. Japan in 2024 became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander, although in a toppled position. Japanese company ispace says its uncrewed moon lander has likely crashed onto the moon's surface during its lunar touchdown attempt, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has not been able to communicate with the spacecraft after a likely hard landing, ispace said in a statement on Friday. The company's livestream of the attempted landing showed Resilience's flight data was lost less than two minutes before the planned touchdown time earlier on Friday. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900km from the moon's north pole, and was on an hour-long descent from lunar orbit. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design is mostly unchanged in Resilience, the company has said. Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3m-high lander and the microwave-sized rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing images of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with US space agency NASA. Japan in 2024 became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander, although in a toppled position.
West Australian
6 hours ago
- West Australian
Superannuation wealth tax ‘a threat' to funding of new unicorns as Escalante moves to mop up VGW
The Federal Government's proposed wealth tax on superannuation has been described as a threat to the emergence of unicorns such as Laurence Escalante's WA-based gaming group Virtual Gaming Worlds. With many investors funding plays such as VGW from their self-managed super funds, the earnings hit on super balances over $3 million is seen potentially depriving start-ups of a key source of development capital. Mr Escalante used millions of dollars raised from hundreds of small and high-net worth backers to build VGW into one of Australia's fastest-growing and most profitable private companies. On Monday, the former financial planner announced a $960m bid to take full ownership of VGW by buying out the 30 per cent of the public, unlisted company he does not own at $5.05 a share from some 700 minority shareholders. One of his early supporters, an investor who is sitting on tens of millions of dollars of profit on VGW shares bought for less than 10 cents apiece, said the Government was 'off the mark' with its proposed move on wealthy superannuants. He and other big minority investors in VGW are mainly invested in the group via their self-managed super funds. 'This Government wants to tax quite heavily the people in the super funds, and that's where these small companies get started,' said the investor, who asked not to be identified. 'There won't be as much money available for start-ups.' Mr Escalante's proposed buyout, launched through his Lance East family office, comes as VGW confronts a major threat to its lucrative operating model from a US regulatory crackdown that is reining in its runaway profits. The group has raked in billions of dollars by using loopholes in US laws banning internet gambling to deliver online 'social' casinos and poker machine games such as Chumba Casino, LuckyLand slots and Global Poker. Under its sweepstakes model, customers buy virtual gold coins that allow them to play VGW's games but have no outside value. However, buyers of most gold coin packages also get bonus 'sweeps coins', which as well as being used to play the games are redeemable for cash in most of the US and Canada. US States are now moving against the group, claiming the games are illegal because they are generating cash winnings for players. Since December, VGW has quit Nevada and Delaware, and flagged its withdrawal from New York, in the face of the pushback. The regulatory crackdown is already hurting earnings, with VGW warning of a 15 per cent hit to its second-half profit. Mr Escalante's opulent lifestyle — he has translated his wealth into a private jet, super cars, luxury boats and swanky properties — and showy and sometimes angry social media posts had already raised doubts about whether he could win over the big institutional shareholders needed to support a stock market listing in the US or Australia. But it is the threat to what has been an enormously successful operating model that has most likely finished off lingering hopes of a float for investors who have been limited to selling stock via an illiquid over-the-counter trading platform. 'It's the model ... the likelihood of regulatory action, which are we starting to see,' a prominent Perth businessman said. While Mr Escalante's 'behaviour and lifestyle doesn't help', despite global stock markets being awash with such 'characters', a listing would have more chance with a 'safer and less vulnerable business model', the businessman said. There is no doubt that Mr Escalante, who founded VGW as a 28-year-old in 2010, has delivered in spades for his investors. The company paid its first dividend — a modest $2.8 million — in early 2019 off the back of a $19.8m profit and $179m of revenue for the December half-year in 2018. COVID-19 lit a fire under the business as uptake of its games in the US soared during lockdowns. Over the past four years, VGW has returned more than $1.3b to its shareholders, with Mr Escalante pocketing the lion's share due to his majority ownership. He will receive a further $200m from the $286m of interim and special dividends set to be paid for the 2025 financial year. VGW's two independent directors have determined that the offer price, which will be reduced by the dividends, recognises the company's value 'after taking into account its medium and longer-term potential and the ongoing risks relating to VGW's business and operating environment'. Mr Escalante's offer was endorsed after an earlier pitch of $3.50 of $4 a share was rejected as too low. However, it still may not be enough to get the buyout across the line, with some long-standing shareholders still reckoning VGW is worth more and disputing the inclusion of the proposed dividends in the offer price. 'A few of the shareholders who have got pretty good holdings feel as if it's an unreasonable offer, they feel as if it should be more,' the VGW shareholder said. The buyout documents are expected to be sent to shareholders by early July, with a vote to be called in August. Mr Escalante was not available for comment this week. Disclosing the buyout offer on Monday, he said it represented 'an efficient opportunity to allow those shareholders looking to monetise their investment for cash to do so'.
News.com.au
7 hours ago
- News.com.au
Cost-of-living pressures sees Aussies take on a second job
The post-Covid boom in the number of Aussies working multiple jobs continues as higher cost of living pressures means more workers are taking on a second gig. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that in the March quarter there were 963,100 Aussies – or 6.5 per cent of the workforce – who had more than one job. While this is actually down from the previous quarter where 999,500 Australians held multiple jobs, it is still a sharp uptick in workers looking to diversify their incomes compared with the years prior to Covid, where around 5 to 6 per cent of Aussies took on a second gig. Seek senior economist Blair Chapman said the spike in cost-of-living pressures from inflation meant more Australians needed to take on extra work. 'We've really seen cost-of-living, especially for employee households, increase quite a lot over the last couple of years,' he said. 'If you've got a mortgage, those repayments have increased quite a bit over the last couple of years so I suspect people have sought a second job just to reach the higher cost of living recently.' Australians are holding onto their second job despite the overall unemployment rate holding firm in recent months, around the 4.1 per cent mark. The main driving force behind this trend is underemployment meaning workers are getting fewer hours from their primary employer than they'd like. 'We are seeing more people being employed in industries where we tend to see a lot of multiple job holdings,' Mr Chapman said. 'For example, we've seen healthcare and social assistance grow and that is one of the industries where multiple job holdings are most common. 'That comes down to the nature of the work, where you have shift work and one business may not be able to provide all the hours an employee wants so the individual has to work across multiple sites to get the hours they are desiring.' Many of these multiple job holders are Australians aged between 20-24, with women more likely to hold a second role over males. In contrast older Australians aged between 60 to 64 are the least likely to hold a second role. 'When we look at a lot of the multiple job holders, they tend to be younger. Maybe it is a university aged person who can't work full-time but can work nights and weekends,' Mr Chapman said. 'While maybe it is not the same job but for them it is probably good they can work multiple jobs with flexible hours.'
