More than loose change

SELF-STYLED change agent Nigel Charles Purves might have other things on his mind besides leading a bid for failed Elderslie Finance Corporation.

Like fulfilling a court order to pay more than $282,000 (plus interest) to a listed tech company for racking up a long list of bills - including $70,000 for leasing a yacht.

Purves has recently been busy spruiking a bid for Elderslie, the finance company chaired by the former Liberal leader John Hewson until shortly before it was placed in receivership in July.

Before he became a director of Elderslie, Purves was boss at Cosmos (since renamed Corum Group) for just over two years before his contract was suddenly "terminated" in March 2005.

Three years on, the tech outfit - which once boasted major shareholders such as Rodney Adler and EquitiLink founder Laurence Freedman - has had its day in the NSW Supreme Court.

And Purves has been found to owe the company money because he breached his duties as boss.

During his time at the struggling technology company, Purves racked up $2551.80 in air fares for his family, $50,106 on car leases, $39,815 on renting apartments, as well as incurring a $70,000 loss after a yacht he had leased on behalf of Cosmos was repossessed.

And we shouldn't forget the $28,083.33 overpayment in "consultancy fees".

The total that Purves - who was originally hired by Cosmos as a change agent - has to fork out is almost equal to the $286,125 in salary and fees he got from the company before he was ushered to the exit.

You pat my back .

Mark Vaile has learned that relationships matter when searching for a life after politics.

The former deputy prime minister has scored a gig as chairman of CBD Energy, the renewable energy outfit that is led by former Impulse Airlines boss Gerry McGowan.

Just over a year ago McGowan was appointed to Airservices Australia's board.

And who happened to talk up his impressive experience in the aviation and energy sectors then?

Vaile, then the transport minister and Nationals leader, of course.

Yesterday, McGowan was equally gushy about his mate's business background and "experience at the most senior levels in politics".

But McGowan's CBD Energy has had its troubles since Vaile and John Howard were beaten to the top gig in Canberra by the Ruddites.

Just days before the federal election in November, CBD Energy won a $20 million grant from the Howard government for a $360 million solar energy farm in the Hunter Valley.

The Rudd Government torpedoed the grant almost as soon as it took office.

Nevertheless, it took McGowan until July before he was able to clear up this minor matter with the Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson.

Thus CBD Energy is no longer going to try to turn the sun's rays into cash in the Hunter.

Getting giddy over gas

Them chavs from BG Group 'av spent months talkin' down the quality of Origin Energy's coal-seam gas assets.

But it appears the Yanks have taken a slightly different point of view.

"I think the word I would use to describe our technical people's response to this is that they were giddy," ConocoPhillip's exploration and production dude, John Lowe, told analysts yesterday.

"I don't know if that translates in Australia."

After a giggly response from the crowd, Origin's chief gas man, Grant King, repeated that he was confident his company's gas could support four liquefied natural gas production trains.

"Now that I know Conoco has been giddy about it, maybe that's a conservative estimate," he said.

As Lowe noted, staff at Conoco's headquarters in Houston are giddy about another prospect as well: the thought of living in Brisbane rather than "the other opportunities they were offered in the ConocoPhillips portfolio".

Lowe offered to name names but stopped short.

However, the Conoco website shows that while Brisvegas may be a bit of a backwater to Sydneysiders, it certainly offers a better quality of life than Iraq, Venezuela or Russia.

Or, for that matter, them Pommie geezers' home town of London.

Why Gail's all smiles

Westpac's chief teller, Gail Kelly, was a smiley ex-dragon yesterday.

And not just because Westpac's bid for her old bank, St George, finally got across the line after it sweetened the $18 billion offer.

An extra 28c a share special dividend, and the prospect of a final payout to come, translates into a $1.25 million cheque for the ex-headmistress at Westpac.

The 1 million Happy Dragon shares that Kelly has got squirrelled away in her bottom drawer were worth almost $31.9 million yesterday.

Though not everyone is smiling. Retail king Gerry Harvey is still under water on the 11,600 St George shares he bought in late November for $35 a piece.

It's all academic

Is Kerr Neilson contemplating life in academia?

We were left thinking as much after he included in Platinum Capital's annual report two long essays about "changes in political structures" in China and Russia, one of which was titled The Myth of the Authoritarian Model - How Putin's Crackdown Holds Russia Back.

Though we suspect Platinum's shareholders were more worried about the fund's 17.2 per cent fall in net asset value last financial year than Putin's crackdown on democracy.

Beware a Heinz bomb

Everyone knows the army marches on its stomach.

And so does the Australian cricket team - or, at least, Shane Warne, the baked bean ambassador-come-fart-time cricketer in India.

So it's not too surprising that the big bean at Heinz Australia, Peter Widdows, is an ex-member of the British Army's bomb disposals unit.

Widdows, an engineer, finished his five-year stint in the army in 1989.

So watch out Campbell Arnott's and Simplot, a bomber's got you both in his sights.

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