CBD

Just the elixir to scrub a CEO

CBD doesn't know if Vanessa Megan's skincare products can get rid of wrinkles - although the promise that its Marine Collagen Intensive Night Cream brings "visible plumping, skin tone, elasticity and reduced sagging" sounds promising. But the company is certainly capable of erasing former Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan from its website.

Since December, Buchanan has been waggling his joystick as boss of digital marketing outfit Rocklive, which apparently uses "extremely complicated technology" to "learn from the millions of connections across all four dimensions, dynamically using this to improve the next interaction".

All very digi-tastic. But how does this role fit with his job at Vanessa Megan, announced with much fanfare in May last year? At the time, Vanessa Megan said it was "thrilled" to welcome Buchanan as chief executive, lauding him as "one of the youngest and most revered CEOs in Australia today".

Buchanan and his wife Liz reportedly bought half of the skincare company, with the rest remaining with its founder, actress Vanessa Gray (whose middle name is Megan).

Gray was last seen on TV a couple of months ago in Network Ten's comedy about a pair of crime scene cleaners, Mr & Mrs Murder, alongside stars Shaun Micallef and Kat Stewart.

The Vanessa Megan website appears to have been thoroughly scrubbed, with all mention of Buchanan gone. Its Facebook page retains a post welcoming him, linking to a blank page on the company website.

However, corporate records show Liz Buchanan became a director of Vanessa Megan way back in January 2012 and resigned the gig in February this year.

CBD has been unable to locate a record of the Buchanans having a shareholding in the company, which appears wholly owned by Gray.

Buchanan is yet to return CBD's call while Gray was travelling and couldn't be reached.

Supplies in doubt

CBD wanted to ask Buchanan what he now thought of Vanessa Megan's skin creams (a snip at just $62 for a 30-millilitre tub).

Accepting the job in May last year, Buchanan said he had "fallen in love" with the company's all-natural potions and lotions.

"When I drink wine (a hazard of building a business involving many partners) I can react with a rash around my eyes, which I used to treat with a steroid cream — I have now happily replaced this with the natural eye cream from Vanessa Megan."

A shadow falls

Brisbane Broncos founder Barry Maranta may be banned from corporate life over the collapse of Sky Shades, a shadecloth business once endorsed by Greg Norman.

While ASIC has decided not to investigate allegations by investors of misconduct by various parties involved in the collapse, it has decided to fund liquidators of one company in the group to prepare a report on Maranta.

The report, to be prepared by Worrells partners Morgan Land and Michael Peldan, will "assist ASIC to consider banning Barry Maranta as a director under our administrative power in the Corporations Act," ASIC lawyer Skye Bowie said in a May 1 letter to an investor. "ASIC's decision would turn on whether the available information from a report would provide sufficient evidence."

Maranta has previously said he was only a director for a short period of time because he was owed money.

Bowie said ASIC's "consideration of your report of misconduct is concluded and ASIC does not intend to correspond further in relation to these same issues".

Pub on the block

Hot on the heels of the recent sale of Sydney inner city rock'n'roll hole, the Annandale Hotel, to Bill Gravanis' Oscars Hotels comes suggestions the Newport Arms pub could see a change of ownership. The pub, said to be worth tens of millions of dollars, is one of the biggest on Sydney's northern beaches and a local landmark - it hosts the area's New Year's Eve fireworks in its sprawling beer garden. It is owned by the Bayfield family, which has sold a few other pubs in the past year, including the Caringbah and Belrose as the clan focuses on other property developments.

The usual suspects have been mentioned as potential buyers of half or all of the pub - the Laundy family, the Short family group and the John Singleton-backed Riversdale Group - but so far no one has emerged to put money behind the bar.

Galling for Gore

The stoush between bankrupt property developer and white shoe scion Craig Gore and the corporate watchdog has spilled over into cyberspace, with complaints his Wikipedia entry has been "intentionally distorted".

Gore is fighting ASIC in the Federal Court over claims by the watchdog that he breached the Corporations Act over a scheme in which Australians invested money in distressed US property through their self-managed super funds.

The case, which is due to go to trial in August, is big and complicated with 17 defendants including Gore's wife Marina, four companies in the US, two in the British Virgin Islands and one in the Cayman Islands.

In the meantime, a Wikipedia user with the handle "Lens Bright" has told wikibosses that Gore's entry includes "material that is false".

"I have contacted Mr Gore directly who has confirmed the false and misleading nature of the material posted," the user said.

Got a tip?

bbutler@fairfaxmedia.com.au