Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond opens up on life, love and work

FEW people say no to John Symond. But it took 12 heart-piercing knock backs before the Aussie Home Loans founder finally got Amber McDonald out on a date.

Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond at his Point Piper home. Picture: Damian Shaw

FEW people say no to John Symond. Bankers have long danced a merry jig around his throne, lured by his success, stakeholders have long bowed to his unique approach, warmed by his charm.

But it took 12 heart-piercing knock backs before the affable Aussie Home Loans founder finally got Amber McDonald out on a date.

He took her to Lucio's for her birthday. He can't remember what they talked about. But it must have been good, given the latest addition to Sydney's Golden Couple list is approaching its first-year anniversary.

This is the good fortune that John Symond hadn't counted on.

It was almost inevitable that 66-year-old Symond would, as he has virtually done, cash out of his beloved home loan business, cede ownership to a major bank and enjoy the rich spoils of 22 years of brutal slog - and phenomenal success.

But he hadn't counted on finding love again.

``She is a wonderful girl and we get on famously - and I'm a hard marker," he said "And I'm not talking about her being attractive, because we all know that, but I'm a hard marker with people and I respect her a lot for who she is and the type of person she is.

``I've been divorced for 22 years and I've never been close to having a serious relationship since. I didn't have time or I felt it wasn't a priority.

``It took me several months to actually get her to go out with me. She played very hard to get. I used to ask her out all the time.

John Symond's simple diet

"We had a couple of business lunches and I thought `geez, she's an interesting girl' and I asked her out at least a dozen times and she would always come out with an excuse.''

The romance is getting so serious that Symond is waiting for the inevitable blow-up, the first test for a blossoming relationship between the ever-smiling multi-millionaire and the former daughter-in-law of Paul Keating.

John Symond's Point Piper home.

But far too early to consider marriage.

``Oh shit yeah?'' he said. "She's never raised it, I've never raised it. I've been married, she's been married, what does the M word even mean these days.

``I'm still learning and we are being careful, taking it day by day and enjoying each other's company. She looks for the good in people.

"She's not a girl who wants to go to all these glitzy parties, she's not into that and I've never been into that. We just like to live low key.''

Ms McDonald, 42, and Mr Symond returned to Sydney this week from a glamorous escape to Europe, sailing his yacht from London to the south of France. They are long trips the self-proclaimed workaholic has increasingly allowed himself to take since ceding 80 per cent of his company to the Commonwealth Bank.

Reclining on his red velvet office chair and sporting a yellow tie, Mr Symond gave a unique insight into his corporate world, the threatening phone calls from bank bosses, his thrifty spending habits, and the real reason he built his monstrous $50 million palace at Point Piper.

It's been a wild ride - from near bankruptcy and a $10,000 loan from his brother, his story is one of a triumphant overcomer, a gregarious boy from the burbs who stuck it to the banks, more often than not flying by the seat of his pants.

He built an empire so prosperous, so enticing, that the very bank he had spent decades smashing came knocking with an open cheque book, eyeing off his $50 billion loan book.

He still doesn't know how to feel about the deal, only recently inked. Should he be wildly celebrating the fact that CBA have gobbled him up, leaving him with 2.75 million shares in the bank (worth a cool $200 million and delivering more than $5 million in annual dividends)? Or is it business as usual?

Giving up food suits shrinking Symond to a tea

When he signed the heads of agreement, shook the hands of the CBA suits, and smiled for the camera, he merely went home and had a quiet meal with his kids.

``There was no emotional reaction. And I'm waiting for it. But I think I convinced myself that nothing was going to change. It wasn't like a wheelbarrow full of money was coming through the door. No cash changed hands,'' he said.

``As I told the bank chiefs since, I've never once had a restless night thinking `my god, what the f*ck have I done', but nor have I gone 'YES!'.''

John Symond and Amber McDonald. Picture: Supplied

Mr Symond remains chairman of Aussie Home Loans and retains a 20 per cent share for the next few years before CBA buys the last remaining shares. He has work to do, he says, work to ensure the bank pays big for that final portion. He wants to double the business before that happens, and with the backing of CBA's cost of funds, such a pursuit is certainly attainable.

So nothing has changed in his mind, even his frugality, which most would concede could be relaxed now that he is no longer paying the bills.

``I still come here, I'm passionate, I talk to my team, I still get skimpy with my spending. I don't do things like get a car driver, because it is a waste. I just get in cabs,'' he said.

``I signed off this morning on my monthly expenses and it was like $530. Now I do a lot of personal entertaining at my home, on my boat, but I fit that bill.

"I catch cabs and I never put in a refund, even though I don't own the business anymore. I'm old fashioned when I say `I don't mind spending, but I hate wasting'.''

Mr Symond can still recite the daggy TV ad he produced back in the early 90s calling on the public to demand a better deal from their banks. He couldn't afford any decent ``talent'', so he wrote his own scripts and appeared himself.

People would tell him he was clever, that he had great strategy, but ``I didn't have a clue,'' he said.

He also still keeps in his top draw the newspaper clippings from his days of waging war with the Commonwealth Bank, advertising openly slamming the bank for robbing Australians blind and then undercutting the major banks on variable interest rates by more than three per cent.

It didn't win him any friends and even resulted in threatening phone calls from CBA's head of retail banking. But respect followed.

``Some years later, now I'm a guy from the suburbs who had never, ever rubbed shoulders with corporate Australia, and I was invited by John Howard for dinner at the lodge," he said. "I turned up and there were the chairmen of two of Australia's major banks, chairman of our biggest ASX companies and here I am feeling out of place.

A slim-looking John Symond at his Point Piper home. Picture: Damian Shaw

"I remember after dinner out on the porch one of the chairmen of the big banks came up and said `let me shake the hand of the man that has given us such heartache'. He congratulated me and I finally realised that we had set the banking industry back ten days of crisis meetings.''

One of his biggest assets, he maintains, was his upbringing, living above his Lebanese parents' various grocery stores, attending 11 different public schools, growing up in tough neighbourhoods and never taking a family holiday because work ethic was preached and practised.

Aussie John Symond hands on with his beauty Amber

But what truly gave him the empathy required to take on the banks on behalf of an aggrieved public, was his own failings.

"I know what it is like to grow up with nothing, I know what it is like losing everything, lose your home, lose your marriage, go to bed crying at night worried about how you are going to educate your kids,'' he said.

``When you come out of it, and if you become successful, it enables you to be able to help people still in those circumstances.''

John Symond has just clocked up 66 years, one of the reasons he's been sipping Chinese tea in his liquid-heavy diet that had helped him shed 25kg. He wants to stay healthy to keep pace with his first love, his two kids and their bevy of mates.

It's the reason he built his 2200sqm Point Piper mansion, complete with double-digit bedrooms, 10-car garage and a ground floor that could accommodate 400 people - a place where his kids would want to stay and play, to spend time with their friends, to host dinners, to have movie nights. With him too.

``I don't go and play bingo, I like mixing with young people,'' he said.

Mr Symond, as he puts it, simply doesn't want to act his age.