Former Bellamy's boss Laura McBain has downed the gardening shears and taken up a new job at Primary Opinion – the ASX-listed journeyman that has now pinned its hopes to a 48 per cent stake in Maggie Beer's food business. And now a rock star CEO.

"I think we've got a Melbourne Cup jockey here," said Primary Opinion director and Bell Potter principal, Hugh Robertson.

Never mind the chaos that Robertson and partner in crime Kathmandu founder Jan Cameron caused at Bellamy's with their successful boardroom rebellion this year.

Robertson says he's been a fan of McBain since he worked on the Bellamy's IPO for Wilson HTM.

"I got to know Laura very well in that process," he said. "They had an A-grade managing director in Laura."

He admitted Bellamy's had "got ahead of itself", which led to last year's woes, but believes McBain has the potential to do another Bellamy's at Primary Opinion. By this he means taking a spec of an idea and building it into a business that was worth more than $1 billion at its peak.

Interestingly, Robertson says that the recruitment process has been between the board and McBain.

This means there was no input from investors like Ms Cameron who owns just under 5 per cent of the business, billionaire Alex Waislitz, former chairman Jeff Kennett, and Ashok Jacob's Ellerston Capital which is still backed by James Packer.

McBain will emerge with a 19.9 per cent stake in the company if she exercises an option to buy 70 million shares at 2¢ each, on top of the 35 million shares she will be issued at 1.8¢.

That's one way to secure your tenure.

Her starting salary will be just $350,000, which is nearly half the base pay she enjoyed at Bellamy's so it is just as well the news of her appointment sent the share price up 50 per cent to 2.2¢. This means her stock and options are already in the money.

Name calling

One of the first things McBain can get around to when she starts next month is change the name of the business, which has been without a CEO since its previous incarnation as an "online knowledge and referral community".

CBD won't pretend to understand what that one was all about, you can ask former chairman Kennett.

He came aboard when it was Q Ltd, and stayed when it morphed into Jumbuck, a mobile chat and dating service provider, before lurching into the knowledge business, which is when Kennett parted ways with the board.

Which bank?

The Commonwealth Bank's woes continued on Tuesday with another law suit being lobbed at Australia's largest financial institution.

Some environmentally minded shareholders are suing the bank in the Federal Court for allegedly failing to report on the business risk posed by climate change, and the bank's strategies to manage those risks.

Special mention was made in the court documents about the Adani coal mine. Commbank has not ruled out funding the controversial project if it goes ahead.

That raises the inevitable question of what incentives, or penalties, have been placed before bank executives to ensure they act in a way that is in the long-term interests of investors?

Which brings us to a column written in 2015 by Commbank board member and novelist, Harrison Young, on the contrasting roles of boards and management.

"Banks as enterprises have far more down-side risk than up-side potential. That's an unavoidable consequence of being lenders. Bankers who get paid bonuses have significant up-side opportunities," said Harrison.

"They have different prospects and different incentives than shareholders do. That's why bank boards are required to produce a risk appetite statement. In doing so, they put a stake in the ground on behalf of shareholders."

We suspect that risk appetite statement has been getting close scrutiny at the Commonwealth Bank board meetings this week.

Oh, and Harrison was chairman of the bank's risk committee when the AUSTRAC saga was rearing its head.

Pay day

Transurban boss Scott Charlton was always going to do well from the toll operator announcing it had doubled its net profit on Tuesday.

Charlton, who has just clocked up five years at the company, took home remuneration of $6.6 million, comfortably exceeding last year's $6.28 million payout. And that did not include the $318,000 he will collect for the final dividend which gets paid out next week.

Pay may have been more problematic for James Hardie boss Louis Gries. Its shares tanked on Tuesday, down nearly 7 per cent at one stage, due to an underwhelming quarterly result.

So what should investors make of the fact that Gries picked up more than $US10 million for the financial year just ended?

Investors may have already twigged to the dismal performance. Ahead of the group's AGM, which was due to start in Dublin on Tuesday evening, more than 15 per cent of proxy votes were cast against the remuneration report.

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