Maxine Horne splurges on more shares in Vita Group

VITA Group boss Maxine Horne, Australia’s wealthiest female CEO, has splashed out another $460,096 to pick up 398,020 more shares in the telco and beauty group she co-founded.

BUYING SPREE

Australia’s richest female CEO obviously lives by the classic mantra to buy low and sell high.

Vita Group boss Maxine Horne has kept up the buying spree in her firm, which runs the Fone Zone chain, and has just detoured in to the beauty game.

The Brisbane bizoid splashed out $460,096 over three days last week to pick up 398,020 more shares in Vita.

That works out to $1.15 a share, so she is already ahead since the stock closed at $1.30 yesterday.

Earlier this month Horne wrote a $708,265 cheque to pick up 561,000 additional shares in the company.

That came just days before Vita settled its $9.5 million acquisition of Clear Complexions. It operates six clinics spruiking anti-wrinkle injections, chemical facial peels and other treatments for clients desperately trying to recapture their youth.

Back in May, she picked up 3.2 million shares at the bargain basement average price of 97¢ a piece.

All that buying comes after the mother of all sell downs.

Horne raised quite a few eyebrows last year when she offloaded 30 per cent of her stake in the business she co-founded, dumping 25 million shares to reap an eye-watering $92 million.

Those were the days when the stock hit a high of $5.47.

It has since headed south for a raft of reasons, not least because Telstra announced plans to cut remuneration to retailing partners such as Vita.

Maxine Horne has detoured into the beauty game.

HORSING AROUND

Failed Gold Coast bizoid Phil Sullivan always maintained he was wiped out in the 2009 collapse of his fund manager City Pacific.

But retirees who lost their life savings in the debacle wonder how Sullivan, a former bankrupt living in a Broadbeach mansion, can have enough money to bankroll his passion for the ponies.

One of these dudded investors alerted City Beat to the fact that Sullivan’s horse Blue Book made a stunning debut win at Doomben this month at 12-to-1 odds. He also owns former sprinter Denmarket, which sired Blue Book.

“He continues to have a life of no worries while a lot of his investors live poorly,’’ this gent griped.

Sullivan told us that his lifelong equestrian obsession “has kept me sane from the sorts of things that are happening’’.

That would be a reference to Sullivan’s battle to overturn court orders that he and three former colleagues repay more than $70 million to about 11,000 mostly elderly investors in the disastrous First Mortgage Fund, which was once valued at nearly $1 billion.

Despite losing two lower court rulings, Sullivan has sought leave to appeal to the High Court to reverse the onerous decisions.

When City Beat rang for a chat, Sullivan did not want to talk about his horses and how he could splash out on such an expensive hobby.

Instead, he preferred to attack Trilogy Funds Management, which seized control of the impaired fund in 2009 and had pursued the latest court action against him.

He alleged that Trilogy had made a hash of things, taking a $630 million fund, offloading 44 assets and returning just $140 million to investors.

“So I ask you who’s the villain?’’ he asked.

STEPPING DOWN

After an astonishing 33-year run, Bob Lette is calling it a day.

The Brisbane bizoid revealed this week that he would step down as chairman of building industry super fund BUSSQ at the end of December.

Lette, one of the longest serving directors in Queensland, has been on the BUSSQ board since the $4.5 billion fund’s inception in 1984.

Since he started practising as a solicitor in the mid-1960s, Lette has left his mark on plenty of sectors, including banking, financial services, aviation and property development.

He is not fading away.

Lette is still active with Mullins Lawyers. He is also still associated with Master Builders Queensland and has been since 1971, meaning that he is older than plenty of the members.