Annette Sharp: Mrs Sippy compo row puts focus on Karl Stefanovic’s Bali investment
An ACA piece on a young girl’s horrific pool accident at Mrs Sippy in Bali has shone a light on Karl Stefanovic’s investment in the pool club, writes Annette Sharp.
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Karl Stefanovic’s investment in Bali pool club Mrs Sippy was once so secret even his former wife Cassandra Thorburn was said to have been blindsided to discover she owned two parcels of shares in the hot Seminyak bar — news that reached her during the couple’s acrimonious two-year divorce settlement.
Stefanovic purchased a third parcel, which he still holds, via one of his many business vehicles, Stefanovic Holdings Pty Ltd, of which he is director.
The question of Stefanovic’s transparency concerning his private financial investments arose last week when A Current Affair, the program Stefanovic has repeatedly lobbied Nine bosses to anchor, went after the director of Mrs Sippy — Ben May — on the streets of Bondi.
At issue was the alleged failure to adequately compensate the family of an eight-year-old Sydney girl who sustained serious head injuries in a horrific pool accident at the Bali venue last year by the company behind Mrs Sippy.
May expressed remorse and indicated to ACA he would help the family.
Conducting that interview for ACA was seasoned reporter Steve Marshall, one of Stefanovic’s great mates. So close, in fact, are the two men that Marshall served as a groomsman at the Today host’s 2018 wedding to Jasmine Yarbrough.
That’s pretty tight.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the two men discussed Marshall’s pursuit of Stefanovic’s business partner prior to the doorstopping of May.
It didn’t seem that May was expecting to be confronted by a panting Marshall in a beachside scooter parking lot, where it appeared the hotelier had just dismounted from a fashionable Vespa.
By the end of the interview Marshall seemed to have persuaded the Mrs Sippy boss to pick up the phone to the mother of young Aliyah Ayash, who had to have 16 titanium plates fused to her “cracked” skull after falling 6m from a diving board at the bar.
In the aftermath of the accident, the girl’s family has struggled, the child’s mother told the current affairs program, to get adequate compensation from Mrs Sippy.
May suggested that it may have been due to communication breakdown between the girl’s Balinese reps and insurance brokers.
Stefanovic’s bosses were surely relieved about the promotion of Stefanovic’s one-time offsider Ally Langdon to the ACA role to avoid a potential conflict of interest had they handed it to their highest paid star.
Stefanovic has previously admitted he was trying to keep the investment in Mrs Sippy under wraps.
In a Melbourne radio interview in 2017 he said, switching gears quickly from private shareholder to proud promoter: “(It) was … something I was keeping under the radar. Yeah, it is in Bali. It’s called Mrs Sippy. It’s an unreal bar.”
This columnist was previously informed Stefanovic’s investment in Mrs Sippy, which also has a bar in Double Bar, comes after he was tipped into the venture by James Packer’s wingman, Ben Tilley.
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