Business Confidential: Your way in to the boardroom
IT’S been owned by an internet porn king, a hairdresser-turned-property-developer and a millionaire businessman. Now this prestige inner-Brisbane property is back up for grabs.
QLD Business
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A LUXURIOUS clifftop dwelling in Brisbane has come on the market with expectations it could change hands for well over $5 million.
City Motor Auctions Group boss Angelo Russo and his better half, Sandra, are offloading their scenic three-level home at 1 Leopard St, Kangaroo Point, now their three daughters have left the nest.
There’s no set asking price for the five-bedroom property, which features an internal lift, gym, steam room and climate-controlled wine cellar.
But records show the couple shelled out $4.74 million for the place in early 2010. The polo-mad Mr Russo, who also has a stake in fast-growing Tow.com.au, did not return a call seeking comment yesterday. Neither did his agent.
The 1184sq m block of land, which affords brilliant city views, has had some rather colourful owners in the past.
Former internet porn king Greg Lasrado shelled out $2.8 million for the dirt back in 1999. The then-millionaire high flyer planned to build a home there but it never happened.
He later squandered his fortune in a downward spiral of bad business deals, drug addiction and a car accident which sent him to jail for two years.
Records indicate property investor and keen yachtsman Peter Harburg, who sold the land to Lasrado, later reacquired it and built the existing home.
He then offloaded it for $6.3 million in late 2007 to Anthony Barakat, the hairdresser turned property developer who made a fortune and then lost a big chunk of it thanks to the GFC and the taxman.
Barakat, who emerged from bankruptcy last year, sold it to the Russos at a substantial loss.
OLD BECOMES NEW
WITH dozens of inner-city development sites sitting idly now that the highrise apartment market has gone off the boil, developers are now eying off a return to the commercial market.
With the office market cycle having hit the bottom we hear companies such as Consolidated Properties, Stockland, Charter Hall, Cornerstone Properties and more are looking at suitable sites.
The jury’s still out on whether in the future the receivers will step in, especially for those Sydney and Melbourne developers who paid a premium for the highrise apartment sites.
However, the smart developers are dusting off old plans for sites and conjuring up new plans for likely purchases in a few years when the cycle kicks into gear and office vacancy rates start tightening up and business want to expand.
WELL COOKED
MEMBER for Cook Billy Gordon has joined the growing opposition to a $41 million takeover of a planned Cape York bauxite mine by a Chinese-linked company.
Gordon has written to both the Foreign Investment Review Board and State Mines MInister Anthony Lynham calling for Moly Mine’s bid to buy Gulf Alumina to be kyboshed.
Gordon says he has serious reservations about the deal given the background of the company. Moly’s bid is under a cloud because it is majority owned by a Chinese company Hanlong, one of whose top executives was jailed for insider trading earlier this year.
Former Hanlong Mining managing director, Hui Xiao, in March received the longest sentence for insider trading in Australian history after being sentenced to eight years and three months’ jail.
HAPPY CLAPPY
SPARE a thought for NAB boss Andrew Thorburn. The top banker may take home millions of dollars each year but he also needs a little love now and again.
Talking at the QUT Business Leaders Forum earlier this week, Thorburn got onto his family and the contribution his wife has made to helping him climb the corporate ladder.
Thorburn got a resounding applause from the audience, which seemed to throw him. “What was that that just happened?” a shocked Thorburn, referring to the happy clapping.
Kind of made you want to give him a hug.
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