Lamenting the Bluescope Steel name in 2003

Don Argus really is shaping up as Australia's softest touch when it comes to CEO contracts. John Fletcher, Brian Gilbertson, Keith Lambert, Tom Park, CK Chow, Paul Anderson and now Kirby Adams have all benefitted amazingly from his generosity as chairman of BHP-Billiton and Brambles and influential director at Southcorp. All of them have made more than $8 million out of contracts and severance deals Argus agreed to and the combined figure is pushing $100 million.

When Crikey is floated off to mug punters for $20, I'll be approaching Argus to become our chairman as he's the softest touch around on pay deals.

Conversely, Argus played surprisingly hardball with BHP Steel as it repeatedly asked BHP-Billiton to keep its name.

Shareholders approved the name change to BlueScope Steel today and we did ask why chairman Graham Kraehe didn't use his cosy relationship with Argus to persuade the world's biggest mining company to change its mind about forcing the expensive change by June 2004.

You see, the Argus-led NAB was Kraehe's banker when he ran Southcorp. Argus even joined the Southcorp board after leaving the bank and Kraehe joined the NAB board. The BHP-Billiton board selected Kraehe to chair BHP Steel and the two friends also sit on the Brambles board together.

The relationship is a good study in how directorships are dolled out to mates. Given that the BHP Steel board and management were adamant they wanted to keep the name, surely the directors club could have come to some arrangement. Apparently not.

Argus seems happy to doll out $10 million CEO packages all over the place but he won't budge when a company wants to continue paying BHP-Billiton for the use of its name.

We'll be raising this one at the BHP-Billiton AGM tomorrow.

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