Back from the brink
The ASX pushes dual-class shares; plus restaurant gems, cultural picks, and why I hate your holiday photos.
I hope none of you missed this review by Alex Carlton of a new-ish, quiet-achieving Sydney CBD diner called Clarence and V. It was actually Archie Hamilton from Betoota Advocate and his mate Dave Liston who introduced me to this joint, and it is just perfect.
Alexandra Carlton
As Alex writes, Clarence and V "is not somewhere you'd take the London clients when they're in town… It's a place you vanish to with your best mate in the office when you need to decompress."
Twenty years ago, I lived upstairs from Latteria in Darlinghurst, when Vito Mollica presided over the café for fashionistas and gangsters. It is oddly reassuring to see him working the tables all these years later on Clarence Street.
Please excuse a slow week past from me on the content front. Soon after returning from London, I went down with COVID, which, after a few days' respite, segued into a demonic strain of gastro.
On my deathbed, I at least managed to eke out my column for the AFR – this month, about the ASX's consultations with Australia's biggest fund managers on listing rule changes post the James Hardie debacle. Audaciously, given the intensity of prevailing distrust in the ASX, CEO Helen Lofthouse is using this process to (quite successfully) lobby fund managers for the introduction of dual-class shares. Our major superannuation funds are apparently on the brink of trading away their/our sacrosanct rights as minority investors for some ill-defined, ethereal public benefits. Then, our share market can be subjugated to homegrown tech bro overlords just as it is in Trumpistan. Yay!
Joe Aston
That column was a welcome distraction from my wretchedness, but also the galling Instagram feeds of Aussies presently sunning themselves in France, Greece, Italy or Spain. The cohort undoubtedly includes many loyal Rampart readers, and I obviously hate you guys slightly less than all the others.