Rowen ''Cool Hand'' Craigie

Tongue-tied ... ANZ chief Mike Smith is struggling with his catchphrases. Illustration: John Shakespeare. Crown Limited's chief executive, Rowen ''Cool Hand'' Craigie, appears to use his time patrolling casino gambling floors to help fine-tune his poker face. Craigie kept financial reporters busy reading his body language and second-guessing his feelings on the casino group's prospects on Friday when he fronted Crown's half-year results in Melbourne. After a couple of questions failed to elicit a sufficiently telling response, one scribe speculated: Advertisement: Story continues below ''It sounds like you're feeling fairly positive but cautious?'' ''I'm sure I'll read it,'' Craigie replied. Another reporter tried a different approach: ''So today, if you were to rate your mood from one to 10, where would it be?'' Craigie replied: ''I'm not sure what your scale is.'' At another stage in the conference, while discussing win rates and the like, Craigie spelt it out for the group: ''On average, the house wins.'' Then, quickly covering, he said: ''That isn't to say that you won't win if you go down there now.'' DEBT AND TAXES The cash-strapped drilling company AJ Lucas has offered some reassuring comments to shareholders who have been deprived of an interim dividend. ''The days of bonuses are over,'' the company secretary, Nicholas Swan, told CBD on the question of whether the group's sale of its stake in a gas field in Queensland could help line the pockets of Lucas executives as well as pay down its crippling bank debts. Swan said no bonuses would arise from the $98.5 million sale. The proceeds will pay down a Rosetta Stone Japanesedebt to the ANZ Bank that has been in breach of its covenants since last year. Hopefully, this should settle the nerves of investors. When the debt-crippled Lucas offloaded another gas deposit for $215.8 million last financial year, it diverted about $16 million of the proceeds in bonus payments to its executives. Swan himself scored a $1.9 million windfall, while his chief executive, Allan Campbell, pocketed $6.5 million on top of his $505,000 salary. At last year's annual meeting, Campbell said Lucas was ''unapologetically a company which rewards success''. On Friday, he still seemed upbeat about the company, which reported a 96.3 per cent dive in half-year profits. He said he had started to detect ''encouraging signs of a pick-up in business confidence''. It is unclear if this pick-up in confidence related partly to the cash-strapped Lucas entering into a ''deferred instalment arrangement'' with the Tax Office last Thursday to pay off its $69.8 million tax bill over three years. In its half-year accounts, the company also said there was a ''trigger event'' on its convertible preference shares. It was triggered when it failed to pay a half-yearly interest payment on time. THE BIG MEN FLY It seems the rivalry between the Sydney Swans and Sydney's second AFL team, Greater Western Sydney, has got off to an overly friendly start - at least in the corporate sphere. After being named the chairman of GWS on Friday, Tony Shepherd, who sits on the board of Transfield Services, noted he had already had a friendly chat with the Swans and ING Real Estate chairman Richard Colless. ''I think we're one plus one equals three,'' Shepherd told CBD. A Geelong fan before he relocated to Sydney in 1979, Shepherd said his recruitment drive might start with Transfield Services' AFL-mad chief executive and Adelaide native, Peter Goode. ''He was really excited about me taking the position,'' he said.

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