Brett Ratner and James Packer created RatPac in 2013. Credit:Dom Lorrimer Later that night, news broke that he has settled with former fiancee, Mariah Carey, for as little as $US13 million. And on Thursday morning, one of the side bets at his gambling empire, CrownBet, announced that it had settled its differences with Tabcorp over its multibillion-dollar merger with Tatts. The end of Packer's career as a pop groupie may not look cheap. But Carey proved to be a lot cheaper than Packer's dalliance with Hollywood frat buddy, Brett Ratner, who is getting all sorts of unwelcome publicity at the moment. In his latest tell-all in October, Packer revealed he lost $100 million on his Hollywood film production venture with Ratner, RatPac.

Illustration: John Shakespeare "Let's just say I did more for Brett than he did for me," said Packer. The good news is that Packer's decision to ditch Hollywood means he escaped the fallout from the sex scandal engulfing his former buddy. The Warner Bros financing deal, which is the cornerstone of RatPac's business, is now over thanks to the Hollywood studio ditching the tainted Ratner and RatPac. That is not something Packer would have needed on his rap sheet – which would have come on top of the significant losses from backing celluloid turkeys.

Ratner has also lost the office he shared with Packer on the Warner Bros' Burbank lot – a bungalow once occupied by Frank Sinatra. Royal flush It would be safe to say that our former PM John Howard is "staggered" after our current PM Malcolm "We are not going to establish a royal commission" Turnbull finally capitulated to a royal commission into our banking sector. It is kind of hard to avoid when the banks ask Canberra to end the torture and just do it. "It will not be a never-ending lawyers' picnic," promised Treasurer Scott Morrison of the $75 million-plus inquiry.

For those who have forgotten, the royal commission into the unions cost around $46 million, with most of its ending up in the pockets of our legal fraternity. So it is safe to assume there will be some very merry Christmas parties cranking up at legal firms around the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs. Cashing out ​A good fund manager always has their eye on the future. So it is good to see Perpetual Ltd boss, Geoff Lloyd, not waiting until his departure in June next year to reappraise his interest in the ASX-listed group.

Lloyd offloaded $719,000 worth of stock this week, significantly depleting his stake in the group. Lloyd still owns $1.8 million worth of stock plus performance options. And speaking of departing CEOs, Jamie Odell troubled the Aristocrat Leisure financial accounts for the last time this week with the report of his exit pay packet from the poker machine maker. "Jamie Odell departed the business on February 28, 2017 after a remarkably successful eight-year tenure," noted the financial report. They were obviously very happy. Odell received a $1.655 million payment "in connection with termination of his employment" taking his total remuneration to $5.5 million. Not bad considering he was only there for five months of the financial year. The new boy at Aristocrat, Trevor Croker, had a tough day watching the poker machine maker's stock briefly shed more than a billion dollars in value as he announced a $1 billion cash bet on mobile phone game maker, Big Fish Games. Safe to say, the big earnings multiple he paid for the business did not go down well with the market.

Amazon's phantoms With Richard Umbers' Myer cutting back staffing hours at some of his underperforming department stores, CBD thought it worth checking on how Amazon is taking up some of the slack. The word filtering out through the Dandenong area is not promising. Quite appropriately, Amazon's phantom launch last week was aided and abetted by a phantom workforce. According to our sources, Amazon had 180 staff at its Dandenong North distribution centre as of last Friday. The long timers have been working there for all of a month.

We are using the term staff very loosely here as it appears they are all casual staff. None of them actually works for Amazon. They are all under contract with labour hire firm Adecco. Welcome to our retail future. Follow CBD on Twitter. Got a tip? ckruger@fairfaxmedia.com.au