It's all Swahili to the V Australia PR mill

Invitations were sent to Melbourne media outlets yesterday requesting their attendance at a "photo opportunity" at Melbourne Airport.

V Australia was hard at it, promoting the international airline's direct flights between Australia and South Africa and the arrival of the boss, Sir Richard.

"From Swahili and safari's [sic] to Skippy and surfing," declared the headline on the press release, which provides a rather good example of alliteration, a rather poor example of punctuation, and a miserable attempt at location.

The problem for V Australia is that Swahili is not a South African language. Indeed, the closest international airport to where Swahili is the official language is Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, just a 2460-kilometre hop from Johannesburg Airport, where Sir Richard's V Australia plans to drop Skippy off for his African safari.

It's an unfortunate miss for the V Australia team, given that South Africa has 11 constitutional languages, including Sotho and Swazi, plus scores more indigenous languages and sub-dialects to choose from.

None of which happens to be Swahili.

But such sensitivities have never hindered a Virgin launch and, barring the bikini girls, the arrival of V Australia's flights between Melbourne and South Africa had all the hallmarks of a Branson affair.

The British billionaire touched down at Melbourne Airport aboard one of his flights, accompanied by a plane load of South African journos and, to quote V Australia, "a gaggle of South African and Australian VIP guests".

On arrival, Sir Richard was greeted by a token local politician, in this case Jacinta Allan, Victorian Minister for Industry and Trade, and the local airline boss, in this case Virgin Blue chief executive Brett Godfrey.

Let's hope they didn't greet him in Swahili.

Then there was the token picture opportunity for the local media, in this case "Charlie the koala" was brought out for a snapshot. It could have been worse. When Virgin starting flying to Las Vegas, Sir Richard arrived dressed as Elvis.

Given that this PR stunt was billed as "V Australia answers the call of the jungle", it's surprising that Sir Richard didn't arrive dressed as Tarzan.

Of course, V Australia also had to have a dig at the local "code-share monopoly" that Virgin was taking on, in this case the long-standing arrangement between Qantas and South African Airways.

Skippy is OK, it seems, but don't mention flying kangaroos.

If the V Australia PR team is still searching for an alliterative alternative, we suggest "style over substance".

New life for Celtex

THE "clean-up" of the old Celtex, and its rebirth as a listed property manager called Stanfield Funds Management, has been finalised.

Yesterday 50 million new shares in the listed company were issued to Nottingham Funds Management, which was previously called Stanfield Funds Management.

A further placement of 31.5 million raised $378,000, to "meet legacy creditors of the previous Celtex management, and for working-capital purposes".

In other words, the debts of Celtex run up under Ken Roberts have been erased, major creditor Commonwealth Bank has been appeased, and the new management team, led by Darren Olney-Fraser, can get on with turning the company into a listed property manager.

Listed Stanfield has agreed to buy property specialist Australian Public Trustees, a responsible entity of the Government Property Trust. Its portfolio of 12 government-leased properties is valued at about $140 million.

In the words of Olney-Fraser, the share issue was the "final step in my getting the old Celtex cleaned up and reworked as Stanfield, with a clean balance sheet and good shareholder base".

That shareholder base includes Hobart-based Bruce Neill, the founder of Select Managed Funds, which went through a series of mergers and ended up part of IOOF.

Another shareholder is Craig Dunstan, a former managing director of MacarthurCook Industrial Property Fund, who this week joined a shareholder push that could lead to his old employer being wound up.

Bill Bowness, a

non-executive director of Centro Retail Group, has also joined the share registry of Stanfield. Other notable investors include Paul Lappin, the chairman of Peter Rowland Catering, and Chris Milne, formerly an executive with Thiess.

Brokers backing Stanfield include EL & C Baillieu, Shadforth Financial Group and Shaw Stockbroking. Chris Eldridge, an institutional broker with BBY, has joined the Stanfield board.