Local broker spotted hanging with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood

IS THERE an IPO of the Rolling Stones pending? Or perhaps a capital raising of sorts. Why else would broker Robbie Willis be hanging out with Ronnie Wood?

City Beat May 23

IS THERE an IPO of the Rolling Stones pending? Or perhaps a capital raising of sorts. After all, the thin white duke himself, David Bowie, did some interesting things with bonds and Wall Street all those years ago.

Why else we wondered would larger than life local broker Robbie Willis be hanging out with Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood in Los Angeles.

Well, we suppose, firstly because he could. Secondly, because he was on a trek over there for a bit of business and pleasure while his Ascot mansion is being renovated and happened to bump into the rocker at a function, as you do.

Whatever the reason the Facebook pics are magic. The Stones have been in LA for their southern California tour, a show Mick Jagger says will be their last in SoCal "for a while, anyway".

Rural retreat

YET another indication that the rural property market was less than buoyant came yesterday with the auction of the giant Brighton Downs Station, a 420,000ha property on the Diamantina River near Winton.

Elders salesman John Burke said the property was passed in at $10.25 million but talks were continuing last night about a possible sale. He would not identify the buyer.

The latest sale comes after AACo earlier in the week sold about $23 million worth of property of its Goonoo aggregation, including Adelong, in Central Queensland.

Cocktail hour

SOME of the city's major property developers last night descended on the cool One One One Eagle Street building for a cocktail party to celebrate a foundation launch.

Leighton Properties hosted the knees up to commemorate the launch of the Property Industry Foundation, which provides to the homeless and at-risk youth.

Among those on the guest list were the media shy Liz Pidgeon, who is on the board of the new foundation; Matthew Faddy from GPT Group; Colliers chief executive Simon Beirne, Cox Rayner Architects' Richard Coulson, Brendan Geffrey and Tim Morgan; EY's Ann-Marie Brady; Knight Frank's Tim Armstrong; and Westpac's Sandy Blackburn-Wright.

Vegas, baby

SPEAKING of property, Sentinel Property Group founder Warren Ebert and major investor, and freshly minted professor, Michael Sherlock, of Brumby's fame, are on a mission in the gambling strip.

They have been checking out the retail trends at this week's International Council of Shopping Centres ReCon convention in Las Vegas.

ReCon is the global event for the world's shopping centre industry, featuring 1000 exhibitors and more than 30,000 attendees.

The Sentinel duo will then continue their tour of retail and heritage properties in New Orleans, Washington and New York, before venturing south to Cuba and the Cayman Islands.

Their trip comes after Sentinel picked up its second property acquisition in NSW, with the purchase of the Hunter Supa Centre retail property in the Hunter Valley for $18.5 million.

QIC memories

OUR jottings on Wednesday about the future of QIC drew a response from several people close to the organisation in its early days, including founder of the $80 billion organisation Jim Kennedy.

He pointed out that selling QIC was really nothing new.

In fact, years ago Kennedy and Treasury had several approaches from interested parties including a "very large Australian bank who made a substantial offer to buy QIC and also offered to bring all their funds management to Brisbane and turn Brisbane into a major financial centre".

Unfortunately, then premier, the smiling Peter Beattie, knocked it back.

True brew

CITY Beat just loves a decent beer launch but we haven't been blessed with many in recent times.

That changed on Tuesday night with an invite from Cascade Brewery, owned today by Fosters. About 100 turned out at the Regatta for the launch of Cascade's First Harvest Ale. Great stuff.

Abalone was on the menu as one-time Brett's Wharf chef Alastair McLeod and Ben Milbourne from MasterChef served up magical delights.

Going, going, gong

ANOTHER day, another list of business awards to fill our pages. We just wonder how half of these companies will travel in the next decade, but, hey, that is another story ... just ask BRW.

Our esteemed Lord Mayor Graham Quirk assembled an impressive group at the newly refurbished Town Hall yesterday to launch the Lord Mayor's Business Awards, now in its eighth year, and it was packed.

This year there are three new award categories - Digital Champion, High-growth Business Start-up and Excellence in International Education.

Winner and loser

CLIVEWATCH: So we had a look at a few of Clive Palmer's tweets again yesterday from his Palmer United Party (PUP). Interestingly, when we clicked on a connecting link it was blocked, Twitter saying because of "potentially damaging content".

Meanwhile, Clive was unmoved at losing $1.6 billion, at least according to the latest BRW Rich 200 List.

His wealth deteriorated from $3.85 billion to $2.2 billion but he wasn't losing any sleep over it, particularly given his court win in WA yesterday over royalties owed to him by his mine operators CITIC.

"That is a windfall of about $300 million to $400 million so I am not really concerned about what people think I am worth," he told City Beat last night.