Star Entertainment Group’s Chairman David Foster and then Managing Director and CEO Robbie Cooke conspired to have the company’s Special Manager removed from his role while seeking to “go to war” with the NSW state regulator, an independent inquiry into the company’s suitability has revealed.
In an explosive opening to public hearings held in Sydney on Monday, Counsel Assisting Caspar Conde revealed a series of communications between Foster and Cooke in which they outline their desire to “get rid of” Nicholas Weeks, the man appointed as Manager overseeing operations of The Star Sydney and Special Manager overseeing The Star Gold Coast and Treasury Brisbane.
Weeks was appointed to both roles in 2022 after inquiries in NSW and Queensland found Star unsuitable to hold its casino licenses in each state.
The communications between Foster and Cooke included a plan to seek legal advice on a possible class action by Star Entertainment Group shareholders against either Weeks or the NSW Independent Casino Commission (NICC).
That’s despite Weeks stating during evidence on Monday that he had believed his relationship with Star’s senior management team was “productive”.
Instead, Conde read out a series of text messages exchanged between Foster and Cooke on 31 January 2024, a day before Weeks was due to meet with the NICC, among which Foster wrote, “another angle is establishing grounds if possible for a class action from shareholders against Nick Weeks or NICC.”
Cooke replied, “We’ll run that by [law firm] KWM on Monday.”
Asked for his response to the revelations, Weeks told the inquiry, “I find it extraordinary that the chairman of a listed company and the CEO exchanged messages contemplating a class action from shareholders against me personally and the NICC in circumstances where their public position and their position with me was that they were working cooperatively to address deficiencies that they need to address.”
Weeks also expressed surprise that Foster and Cooke knew details of the meeting he had planned for 1 February 2024 with the NICC, stating, “I expect that somehow they have accessed my diary ahead of the 1 February meeting.”
It was in the lead-up to that meeting that Foster wrote to Cooke, “They are prepping for war, we’d better do the same, should we talk to KWN?”
Cooke wrote back later the same day, “We are meeting Monday to get ready for war.”
Asked again for his response during Monday’s testimony, Weeks said, “I think it’s extraordinary. In circumstances where this casino’s license is suspended and I have been appointed to manage the casino – and one of the fundamental objectives of Star is to regain trust and confidence with its regulators, including me as manager – that they were monitoring my diary entries and investigating the people I was meeting with. I find to be extraordinary.
“It’s difficult to reconcile everything that the company has told me, everything it tells the market and everything it tells the regulator in relation to its motivations to reform and to work cooperatively with the regulator.
“To suggest that they want to ‘go to war’ with the regulator and me in circumstances where their license is suspended and there is a decision about that suspension that has already been scheduled to occur in June this year is extraordinary.”
Weeks also expressed his “surprise and disappointment” at a written response from Star, signed by Foster and Cooke and dated 23 January 2024, in which they had pushed back at a raft of observations and suggestions made by Weeks in a report about the company’s remediation efforts.
“I was surprised because it was a very lengthy response [by Star] that took issue with many of the findings, which was contrary to what the Board had told us,” he recalled. “There was also a very extensive amount of commentary and rejection of findings in that report which again I was surprised about. I had several meetings both with the board and with Mr Cooke in relation to the report where very few questions were asked, so I was surprised when there were as many comments received back as I did.
“I was disappointed because the purpose of providing that report to the company was so they could be clear about those things that I considered to be deficiencies and areas that need to be addressed.
“The way they were characterized in the report were as potential impediments to reform, so I was disappointed because the company’s rejection of my assessment of many of those deficiencies suggested to me that there was an enhanced or increased chance that the company was not going to take steps to address those findings and observations which I regarded to be accurate and legitimate.”
In a disastrous first day of the inquiry for Star, Weeks also revealed that Star’s former CFO Christina Katsibouba had resigned her position last month because she had lost confidence in the integrity of Cooke.
“[Katsibouba] did share with me a range of reasons [for leaving] including the fact that her working relationship with the CEO and the Board had deteriorated,” Weeks stated.
“Christina shared with made the fact that she considered the group leadership team, which is the most senior management team, to be dysfunctional and to have been dysfunctional for some period of time, and that she had lost faith and confidence in the integrity of the CEO.”
