Category: 3. Business

Baker McKenzie has advised international IT service provider Fellowmind on its acquisition of Xperity, expert in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. The joining of forces is part of Fellowmind’s international growth strategy and strengthens its position as a Microsoft partner worldwide.

Fellowmind is a leading Microsoft partner and part of the top 1% of Microsoft partners worldwide. With Xperity on board, Fellowmind expands its CRM expertise and increases its market share within the manufacturing industry, business services, and healthcare. This allows Fellowmind to even better support existing and new customers in strengthening customer relationships, centralizing customer data, and using AI to optimize sales, service, and marketing departments.

Baker McKenzie provided legal advisory services to Fellowmind, with the core team including Joost Polman as team lead, along with Philip Lückmann and Daan Paquay.

Further information is available on the company website:
• Xperity joins Fellowmind

The bank charged fees on dead people’s accounts, ignored hardship notices and misled customers. But over those same three years, ANZ bosses were awarded more than $26m in bonuses.

Now, shareholder proxy firms are waiting until December to see whether bonuses will be cut in response to the record $240m in fines given for ANZ’s widespread misconduct.

The short-term bonuses, awarded to 11 executives between 2021-22 and 2023-24, have been condemned as indefensible and “completely out of touch” by the Finance Sector Union, which has been assisting some of the 3,500 ANZ staff whose jobs will be cut by next September.

The bonuses have also been criticised by the Greens as an example of “how broken the system is”, with the total amount paid out over the three-year period exceeding some of the fines ANZ received from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic).

Ahead of a shareholder revolt at last year’s annual general meeting, ANZ’s former chief executive Shayne Elliott gave up a long-term bonus worth $3.2m. But Elliott’s short-term bonuses of $5.5m over the three years were not affected.

Other top executives were paid $3.2m, $3.1m and $2.8m in bonuses during the three-year period.

“That’s indefensible and completely out of touch with what the community expects,” said the FSU’s national president, Wendy Streets.

“At a time when ANZ is slashing 3,500 roles to save $800m offshoring jobs and apologising for compliance failures, these payouts are tone-deaf and unjustifiable.”

Corporate bonuses in focus

The ANZ case is just one example of bonuses being awarded to top staff, despite community outrage and regulatory action over a company’s conduct.

Guardian Australia on Monday revealed health insurer Bupa had declared $14.1m in bonuses for senior staff a year before it agreed to pay a $35m fine for “unconscionable conduct”. The chief executive of the childcare giant G8 Education also secured a short-term bonus of $534,426 last year, despite multiple safety breaches and the employment of a man subsequently charged with child sexual offences

In ANZ’s case, the bank last month accepted its failure to respond to 488 customers who submitted hardship notices between May 2022 and September 2024, which resulted in the $240m in penalties. In some cases, ANZ took more than two years to respond to requests for help.

It was separately ordered to pay a $25m fine for failing to provide promised benefits to customers in 2022. ANZ also faced a $10m fine for contravening the credit act during the same financial year, while separately helping the sovereign debt management agency with a $14bn bond issuance in a way that exposed the government to a “significant risk of harm”, according to the financial regulator.

In that same financial year, eight senior ANZ executives received short-term annual bonuses worth $8.24m – an average of $1m each.

The following financial year, ANZ was ordered to pay a $15m fine for misleading customers about credit available in their accounts. It also faced a $900,000 fine for breaching continuous disclosure obligations. In August 2023, it told the government it overstated bonds trading data, describing this as an “unacceptable failure”.

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But during that 12-month period, 11 senior executives were paid short-term bonuses totalling $10.5m.

These payments were roughly 58% of the maximum bonus available, which was less than the 66% average across the ASX200, according to an analysis by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (Acsi).

On 2 July 2024, ANZ was sanctioned for not stopping or refunding fees charged to dead people between July 2019 and September 2023. Almost 19,000 customers were affected. The Banking Code Compliance Committee described the breaches as serious and systemic.

ANZ declined to comment when contacted last week over its payment of bonuses.

The bank has apologised on numerous occasions for the breaches and pledged to overhaul its culture.

In September, the bank’s chair, Paul O’Sullivan, said more than 50 “accountability reviews” had been conducted in its markets division as a result of Asic’s action.

“It has resulted in significant impacts to variable remuneration for certain individuals,” O’Sullivan said last month. Those impacts will not be known until later this year shortly before the bank’s annual general meeting in December.

The Greens senator Nick McKim said the lucrative bonuses showed “how broken the system is”.

“The culture at the top of Australia’s banks hasn’t changed since the royal commission,” McKim said, adding the people who presided over the bank at the time of the wrongdoing “are still cashing in”.

According to Acsi’s research, only one of 142 chief executives at ASX200 companies who were eligible for a bonus didn’t receive one last financial year.

Kering’s new chief executive has vowed to make sweeping changes in an urgent bid to refocus the luxury group on fashion, as it announced a €4bn deal to sell its beauty operations to L’Oréal.

Luca de Meo signalled that he planned to make several big changes to the Gucci-owner, one of the world’s top luxury groups, saying he had moved to seal the beauty deal “as quickly as possible” and promising that “you’ll see others”.

The luxury sector enjoyed a boom during the pandemic, driven by housebound consumers spending more on high-end goods and huge growth in the Chinese market, but has since been hit by consumers reining in spending and a faltering Chinese economy.

De Meo, brought in from Renault where he led a large turnaround of another of France’s top listed companies, said his top priority was to refocus Kering on its fashion brands, notably Gucci. As well as beauty and fashion, the group also sells eyewear, while its jewellery houses include Boucheron.

“The urgency is to focus on the things . . . where we have a critical size and skills. That will help me lighten the boat and be able to focus on the relaunch of fashion brands,” de Meo told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday after Kering announced the sale of its beauty business.

He added that he wanted to “inject more speed into some of our decisions”.

The group’s flagship label — which accounts for about half of its sales and two-thirds of profits — has fallen out of favour with consumers in a challenging luxury market. It also suffered from over-dependence on China when demand in the country slowed.

Under the terms of the deal, L’Oréal is buying perfumer House of Creed, as well as 50-year licences to develop and sell fragrances under the Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga labels. The French beauty giant will pay undisclosed royalties to Kering in return.

The talks, which had begun before de Meo arrived from Renault, sped up from August, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Kering’s chief said he remained “pragmatic” with regard to other potential asset sales, including a possible disposal of its successful eyewear division.

“I don’t want to close the door because we try to be very open,” de Meo said, before highlighting that Kering’s eyewear business was important to some of its most valuable clients and that it was the industry leader on the highest-end segments.

Kering’s shares were up 4.1 per cent on Monday afternoon, extending a rally of more than 80 per cent over the past six months, on the back of hopes that de Meo can turn the group around and that the broader malaise in the luxury industry is easing.

“I’ve always believed that speed is important in modern business,” said de Meo.

“As soon as I saw that I had this opportunity, I tried with Nicolas [Hieronimus, chief executive of L’Oréal] to work so that we could conclude [the deal] as quickly as possible. And you’ll see others,” he added.

UBS analyst Zuzanna Pusz said the deal would help Kering reduce its debt, thus tackling “one of the biggest investor concerns”.

Pusz calculates that the proceeds could reduce Kering’s net debt from 3.1 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to roughly 2 times, which may outweigh impairments that the group has taken on parts of its beauty business. Kering acquired Creed for €3.5bn only two years ago.

For L’Oréal, the deal marks its biggest-ever acquisition. Hieronimus said it would cement its status as the market leader in high-end beauty, and that L’Oréal would focus its efforts initially on developing Creed.

L’Oréal’s chief said in an interview that he hoped to almost triple Creed’s annual revenues to €1bn “fairly quickly”. The group’s shares edged up by 0.3 per cent on Monday.

L’Oréal will not get its hands on the licence for Gucci, which is expected to ultimately prove the most valuable, until a deal with beauty group Coty expires in 2028.

“Obviously, having the opportunity, when it is legally possible, to recover the Gucci brand was one of our motivations,” said Hieronimus. 

L’Oréal has form for growing high-end beauty brands. Revenues at Aesop, the upmarket soap maker it bought two years ago for $2.5bn, increased by about 10 per cent in 2024, according to one person close to the business.

The French group, which holds the beauty licence for Yves Saint Laurent, another Kering brand, generates about €3bn in annual beauty revenues from it, according to Hieronimus. That is slightly above YSL’s €2.9bn of fashion sales last year.

This implies that there is substantial opportunity to grow Gucci’s beauty range, which Hieronimus said generated only about €600mn in revenues last year, compared with the label’s €7.7bn of fashion revenues.

“When you look at the positioning of Gucci in this segment, there is room for improvement,” acknowledged de Meo. 

Spanish fragrance and fashion group Puig also took an interest in Kering’s beauty division, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Puig declined to comment.

But in the end, the people said, the deal with L’Oréal offered a more logical and expansive partnership. 

The Angolan government and HSBC have reached financial close on the €200mn water infrastructure ProÁgua project, which is set to modernise water supply systems and provide millions across the country with access to clean drinking water 

The loan agreements were signed between the Ministry of Finance of Angola, representing the sovereign borrower, and the bank, with export credit agency (ECA) cover provided by Bpifrance Assurance Export and the Swiss Export Risk Insurance (Serv). 

The project is being executed by a consortium of Swiss company Mitrelli and French multinational Suez International.

Its financing consists of two tranches: a commercial loan facility for financing the downpayment in the amount of €30mn (equating to 15% of the total project amount), and an ECA-backed buyer’s credit financing the remaining 85% of the project, totalling €170mn. 

The financing structured reflects a “robust, de-risked model for infrastructure investment in emerging markets”, Mitrelli and Suez said in a dual statement. 

HSBC acted as sole coordinating arranger, mandated lead arranger and facility agent. The bank played a “central role in originating, structuring, and executing the financing while facilitating efficient disbursement mechanisms and long-term repayment structures”, according to the statement. 

Meanwhile, Bpifrance Assurance Export issued “comprehensive export credit insurance, enabling favourable terms of the financing and risk mitigation”, together with Serv, which provided reinsurance, according to the stakeholders. 

Their export credit insurance “enabled Angola to access long-tenor financing at competitive rates, while also supporting French and Swiss exports”, they said. 

This transaction also represents the first time Bpifrance has issued its export credit insurance based on direct commitments from a Swiss engineering, procurement and construction contractor outside of France. 

The ProÁgua project will expand and modernise water access across the provinces of Luanda and Icolo e Bengo. According to the Angolan government, it will deliver clean water to over nine million people, addressing urgent needs in a region where only 34% of the rural population currently has access to safe drinking water. 

The infrastructure project will include the rehabilitation of four major water treatment plants, construction of two decentralised compact units, installation of six desalination units and 15 boreholes, and the deployment of smart metering and digital utility management systems. 

It will be executed with Angola’s public water utility as the local implementation partner.  

A second phase of the project is already under discussion among the parties, aiming to extend access to safe drinking water to more people across the country. 

This latest financing follows other ECA-backed water projects in east Africa in recent years, including a US Exim-supported solar and water project in Angola, a UKEF-sponsored infrastructure upgrade in the same country, and a joint ECA loan for a wide-scale Côte d’Ivoire water availability initiative.

16 new Euroclusters were selected for funding under the call Joint Cluster Initiatives (Euroclusters) for Europe’s Recovery (SMP-COSME-2024-CLUSTER). With an overall budget of €42 million, the new partnerships will advance the EU’s ambition for a greener, more digital and more resilient industrial future.

Starting in October 2025 and running for a period up to 3 years, the 16 new Euroclusters, funded through the Single Market Programme, represent 107 beneficiaries from 26 countries and cover all 14 industrial ecosystems.

More than 30 million EUR of the Euroclusters budget will be channeled directly to SMEs through open calls organised by the consortia. This support will fund projects that: 

• foster innovation and the uptake of advanced technologies,
• build capacity in strategic sectors, and
• drive Europe’s transformation towards a sustainable, digital and resilient economy. 

Additional activities, including training, internationalisation and knowledge exchange will complement this main objective, helping small businesses expand their innovation potential and connect with new partners across borders. 

The 16 Euroclusters are divided into two strands, focusing respectively on net-zero technologies and critical raw materials (Strand 1), and on other strategic value chains (Strand 2). 

To see the whole list of the new Euroclusters and know more about each of them, read the article on the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP) website.

More information 

European Cluster Collaboration Platform 

To keep updated on the Euroclusters activities and achievements, follow the ECCP via their Social Media accounts on Twitter  and  LinkedIn and subscribe to the monthly ECCP newsletter.