On The QT: Gold Coast businessman Bruce Grady emerges from Supreme Court battle with US company
A Gold Coast businessman has emerged from the mother of all battles with a US petrochemicals giant unscathed and smiling. This is how he did it.
Business
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IF SIZE mattered, an entrepreneurial Gold Coast fellow who stepped into the ring with a giant should have been set for a mother of all floggings.
Instead, he’s emerged not bruised and not bloodied and is, in fact, smiling.
The fellow is property-focused Bruce Grady, the ‘ring’ was the Supreme Court, and the ‘opponent’ was US petrochemicals biggie Huntsman Corporation.
Bruce was the protagonist and the financially muscular Huntsman was hoping to put him on the canvas.
The ‘fight’ revolved around an industrial property in Brisbane that a Huntsman arm leased until late in 2017.
Bruce owns the property through company Gateway Property Services, which sued the Huntsman Chemical Company Australia for $1.758 million.
The issue – Gateway alleged there was damage to the property that breached a lease and was not repaired before the lease ended or subsequently.
The Gateway claim, lodged 15 months ago, included $912,000 for loss of rent.
Huntsman came out fighting, defending itself and denying liability.
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The Huntsman name is quite familiar to many Australians, mainly because the late Kerry Packer and Huntsman founder Jon Huntsman Snr jumped into a business bed together.
In 1993 the billionaires teamed up to buy the Australian operations of Monsanto, which were renamed Chemplex, and also bought the chemical business of Texaco for $US1 billion.
Jon Huntsman died early last year and son Peter heads the business, while Jon Jnr is the US ambassador to Russia.
Huntsman makes a diverse range of products and, at one point, was making burger containers for McDonald’s.
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Bruce, in the Huntsman context, is like McDonald’s string chips -- small fry.
He’s been on the Gold Coast since 1991 and runs his BNG Investments business, which has highway billboards in its portfolio, from an office in Surfers Paradise in a building not remotely as glamorous as the Huntsman global HQ in Texas.
Property players for whom Bruce’s done work include billionaire Bob Ell and Sydney developer Terry Agnew, who’s just sold out of Great Keppel Island.
His Brisbane property, at Coopers Plains, was bought in 2002 and the major buildings on it are two large industrial sheds.
Gateway, according to court documents, had been unable to re-let the property since Huntsman’s 10-year lease ended, allegedly because repairs had not been carried out.
Gateway said it had missed out on $101,400 a month through not having a tenant.
The areas that need remedial work, as chronicled in the Gateway statement of claim, ranged from walls with holes in them to termite damage and the floor slab.
The case went to mediation and the result late last month left Bruce, in his owns words, ‘a very happy man’.
He also should be happy over his Coopers Plains asset.
It cost him $3.8 million in 2002, he’s been receiving close to $1 million in annual rent for the last few years, and a 2017 valuation came in at $11.5 million.
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The holding, which elderly Brisbane shopping centre owner Steve Kaskabas has been trying to sell since 2016, sits between the Spinnaker and Bougainvillea towers and is approved for a 22-level building with 38 apartments.
It’s north of the former Midwaters site, which Jim’s listed Raptis Group ‘lost’ during the GFC.
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The yet-to-start Southport hotel has been earmarked for part of the Badalotti camp’s Imperial Square holding in Ferry Rd.
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