Blog Day 320 - Wednesday 10 February 2021

It would take Krakatoa exploding and Tokyo being wiped out by a tidal wave to get Eddie off the front page of the media at the moment.  Unless you have been living in a bark hut the Daintree rainforest you would have to know that Eddie McGuire has been in a bit of strife recently over a review of racism in the Collingwood Football club (CFC) and his comments in response to said review.

Late yesterday, after some pressure from the usual vocal pressure groups, Eddie resigned after 23 years as President of the CFC.  

As some of you would know I have no great interest in the AFL or the footy in general although I do find find the politics of the AFL and of the clubs and the games interesting.  (My lack of interest has resulted in me winning a number of footy tipping competitions over the years).

Eddie was saying that his 23 years at the helm of CFC had been particularly successful.  In that 23 years CFC have won one grand final.  The AFL has introduced many measures to try and ensure that the competition is an even one including salary caps and draft picks.  If this was working a club should win a grand final every 18 years and a powerhouse club such as Collingwood should expect to win more than one grandy in 23 years.  So by the ultimate measure Collingwood hasn't been particularly successful during Eddie's reign at the club, no matter what he says.

Twenty three years as president (or chairman) of any organisation is far too long, most public companies have a limit of something like a 3 or 5 year term of office for their board chairmen.  Any longer and the board may get stale, possibly sycophantic to the chairman and the president/chairman may treat the club or company as their own private bailiwick.

The racism review made a comment that some people had significant individual influence in the CFC  without naming them.  Any guesses anybody?

The second big news on corporate governance is the outcome of the NSW enquiry into Crown Casino's suitability to run the new casino in Sydney.  The enquiry has found that Crown is not a suitable party to hold the licence therefore the casino part of the new complex is unable to open.  

There were a number of issues mainly relating to how the Crown casinos in Melbourne and Perth were operating.  In broad terms the enquiry found that Crown ignored the money laundering occurring at its venues, acted illegally in operating junkets out of China, failed to protect its staff in China who were probably acting illegally and dealt with people who were involved in organised crime.

James Packer through CPH (Consolidated Press Holdings) still holds 37% of the Crown shares and although not on the board himself had a number of board members representing him.  Unfortunately these board members, and some senior management of Crown, seemed to think that their first loyalty was to Packer and not to the company.  There were many examples of this, such as Packer having regular financial performance information provided to him and being included in decision making for the organisation.  

At this time Packer was an ordinary shareholder and should only have been receiving information available to the other shareholders.

 Now comes the interesting bit, if Crown is not a suitable party to run a casino in Sydney is it a suitable party to run a casino in Melbourne and Perth.  Only time and Dan will tell.  (The state of Victoria is a bit addicted to the taxes it receives from Crown and won't want to upset that applecart. As a matter of interest Crown is the largest single site employer in Victoria).

It never rains but it pours, some days I battle to find things to talk about and other days there is a plethora of interesting stuff.

We have had another two virus infections sourced from the Holiday Inn at Tullamarine, these are both being classified as local or community infections.  One of the people that has tested positive is a returned overseas traveller who has tested positive 2 days after being released from quarantine at the Holiday Inn.  The authorities have indicated that this means that this person caught the virus whilst in quarantine.

The other infected person is a food and beverage worker from the Holiday Inn.  Apparently both of these people were close contacts of the earlier employee who tested positive a couple of days ago.

So far there hasn't been any further community transmissions as a result of the Holiday Inn infections although a number of venues in the Sunbury area have been place on the alert list and two schools in the area have closed for the day.

The Holiday Inn has now closed as a quarantine hotel and the inmates transferred to another facility. 

Anybody staying at the Holiday Inn Tullamarine on their next holiday?

After all that, now onto today's figures.  In Victoria there were two new case as described above, NSW had 4 new infections all ROTs and Qld 1 also a ROT.  There were 7 new infections Australia wide, 5 of which were ROTs.

Victoria received the results of 22,900 tests in the last 24 hours, NSW 18,900 and Qld 8,100.  Looks like the testing numbers are on the up and up.

Currently Victoria has 16 active cases, 11 of which are ROTs, NSW has 9 active cases plus 35 ROTs and Qld 6 active cases all of which are ROTs.  Australia wide there are 46 active cases of which 31 are ROTs plus NSW's 35 ROTs.

Worldwide there were 438,000 new infections reported and although higher than the last couple of days there seems to be a downward trend developing here.  There were 13,400 deaths reported worldwide in the last 24 hours and this too could be the start of a downward trend, only time will tell.

In the US they reported 87,000 new infections in the twenty four hours of 09/02, this also appears to be continuing a downward trend.  The US reported 1,500 deaths for the same twenty four hour period which also appears to be part of a downward trend.

The UK reported 14,000 new infections for the twenty four hours 09/02 and this is also a downward trend and with 333 deaths for the same period this is trending downwards as well.  

So good news in the USA and UK at the moment.

Now for the not so good news, I have a few things on over the next couple of days so the blog may be a bit irregular, let's hope it doesn't invoke the "curse of the blog".

Corona Virus Daily Stats – February 2021 – Covid Normal (as much as possible)

*Please note that the “Aus Active & Aus ROTs columns do not include the NSW ROTs.  (ROTs = Returned Overseas Travellers)

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Aus ROTs Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Vic ROTS Increase	*Aus Active Infection	*Aus ROTs	Vic Active Infection	Vic ROTs
01/02	28,817	7	7	20,449	1	1	61	44	21	21
02/02	28,820	2	2	20,450	1	1	61	43	22	22
03/02	28,830	6	6	20,450	0	0	57	42	21	21
04/02	28,835	6	5	20,452	3	2	51	39	21	21
05/02	28,839	4	4	20,455	3	3	53	40	24	23
06/02	28,848	6	6	20,456	0	0	52	41	22	23
07/02	20,850	2	2	20,456	0	0	52	41	21	20
08/02	28,856	6	4	20,456	1	0	53	41	20	18
09/02	28,860	2	2	20,456	0	0	46	34	15	13
10/02	28,867	7	5	10,458	2	0	46	31	16	11

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
01/02/21	103,514,297	412,018	2,237,252	9,577
02/02/21	103,892,731	378,434	2,246,435	9,183
03/02/21	104,378,657	485,926	2,262,084	15,649
04/02/21	104,861,308	482,651	2,275,840	13,756
05/02/21	105,394,460	533,152	2,292,538	16,698
06/02/21	105,879,863	485,403	2,307,031	14,493
07/02/21	106,329,652	449,789	2,318,949	11,918
08/02/21	106,677,372	347,720	2,326,819	7,870
09/02/21	106,983,743	306,371	2,335,265	8,446
10/02/21	107,377,125	438,382	2,348,700	13,435

	US & UK Daily New Infections & Death Numbers
Date	US New Infections	US Daily Deaths	UK New Infections	UK Daily Deaths
31/01/21	136,252	2,640	23,400	1,205
01/02/21	110,470	1,789	21,190	590
02/02/21	130,759	1,881	18,668	407
03/02/21	110,679	3,389	16,906	1,451
04/02/21	119,235	3,796	19,215	1,322
05/02/21	119,931	4,941	20,374	915
06/02/21	128,114	3,522	19,204	1,015
07/02/21	102,420	2,618	18,363	828
08/02/21	86,928	1,268	15,904	376
09/02/21	86,646	1,465	14,138	333
10/02/21

Covid Normal Reminders;

Remember: to think carefully before mucking around with spreadsheets and tables in Blogger; to keep up your Covid era exercise regime; if you put your mask on when you enter a shop you can take it of again when you leave ( I seem to get home and realise I still have my mask on); to laugh at my jokes; it is a beautiful day out there, get out and enjoy it; keep your corporate governance up to date.