The Aussie billionaire in the box seat in Trump’s America

When Anthony Pratt announced this week that he had been granted permanent residency in the US, the only surprise was that it had taken him so long.

“We decided it was time to live in America,” he said in a post on LinkedIn, adding: “My family are all US citizens.”

But the billionaire has barely called Australia home for decades.

Anthony Pratt (centre) at this year’s Met Gala.Credit: Getty Images

In 1991, Pratt flew to the US to crack the world’s biggest market on behalf of the family packaging business, Visy. He created a success story that is all his own: the company has 70 factories and 12,000 employees in the US.

As chairman of Visy, he controls the multibillion-dollar business he shares with his siblings that dominates Australia’s packaging sector. But it is this US business, Pratt Industries, which he owns outright, that is the main source of his $23 billion wealth, which dwarfs the hefty family inheritance from his late father Richard Pratt.

It is a success that rivals Rupert Murdoch in terms of wealth-creation.

And while he may not wield Murdoch’s influence, Pratt has revelled in his proximity to political power, which reached its zenith under the previous Trump administration and promises to rise again with the recent election win, despite controversies over their previous interactions.

In Melbourne, he has ensured the Pratt family name still wields the clout cultivated by his gregarious father Richard, who built Visy into a multibillion-dollar packaging powerhouse and forged strong connections across the corporate, political and sporting worlds.

Anthony has continued his father’s tradition of hosting parties where the rich and powerful mingle at the family mansion, Raheen in Kew, but with a flamboyance that is all his own. An event this year was headlined by US pop star Katy Perry, who was flown out exclusively for her performance to corporate and political powerbrokers including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen.

For powerbrokers on both sides of politics in Australia, it is not the opportunity to rub shoulders with Perry that concerns them in his move, so much as the potential loss of the generous fundraisers Pratt supports for both major parties.

Last year, this publication reported Pratt made consulting payments to Paul Keating, a former Labor prime minister, and his Liberal counterpart, Tony Abbott.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended the party where Katy Perry performed an exclusive show for Anthony Pratt.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

If there are any concerns about his move straining his bonds with Australia, ANZ boss Shayne Elliott, who also attended the Katy Perry event, certainly isn’t showing it: “I have known Anthony for a long time and I know his heart will remain Australian,” Elliott says.

“He has navigated a global career for many years and will continue to do so. I am confident he will continue to be a contributing member of the local business scene and actively involved in creating greater opportunities for Australia in the world.”

Business and political interests are not the only concerns that will keep Pratt’s eye on Australia. The family faces a fresh court battle with his late father’s love child, Paula Hitchcock, who is seeking a slice of the multibillion-dollar family fortune left to the Pratt siblings.

The basis of Hitchcock’s latest claim is that she was acknowledged as a member of the family by her father, Richard Pratt, and his wife, Jeanne, and that she deserves an equal slice of his fortune alongside his other children, Anthony, Heloise Waislitz and Fiona Geminder.

Pratt himself says it will be business as usual, but his green card means there will no longer be the need to spend hundreds of hours each year flying between his stately New York home and Melbourne, an exhausting visa run, even if it is on a $50 million Bombardier Global Express jet.

To give an idea of just how much the US dominates his life, all of Pratt’s Australian registered businesses have their address as Pratt’s palatial turn-of-the-last century home in New York’s Bedford Hills, Lionwalk.

“The 13 acres bestow everything from splendid French-doored salons and eight fireplaces and eight bedrooms to a classic courtyard, 50-foot pool, tennis court, pond, equestrian complex and – for a final tribute – twin pergolas adorned with wisteria gifted from the Emperor of Japan,” one real estate site says of Pratt’s historically significant home.

It is an estate befitting someone who graced the society event of the year, New York’s Met Gala – alongside the Kardashians, Jennifer Lopez and fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman – in a hot-pink frock coat.

And while references have been made to Pratt’s family living in Melbourne – including a stint during COVID which was highlighted by a soiree that flouted lockdown rules in 2021 – Pratt’s wife, Claudine Revere, has run a catering business in New York for 20 years and a wedding venue on Staten Island, New York.

Staten Island is an important marker of Pratt’s US triumph. In 1997, he opened a factory there, with the blessings of New York’s then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It marked a turning point for the struggling US business and the start of Pratt’s increasing time spent in the US. He bought his first mansion there in 2000.

As for the timing of Pratt’s green card announcement, it can’t be a coincidence that it comes hot on the heels of the latest US election.

There is more money to be made with Donald Trump returning to the White House.

It is no coincidence that Pratt twice topped the AFR rich list during Trump’s first presidency.

Anthony Pratt on the cover of the 2018 Rich List issue.Credit: Kim Haughton

Trump was certainly aware.

When told, in 2018, by an Australian Financial Review journalist that Pratt had topped Australia’s rich list that year, the US president had a quick response: “He’s the No.1 person here, too.”

He then instructed the entire dining room at his Mar-a-Lago resort to give Pratt, a regular visitor to the Palm Beach Florida resort and very public backer of the president, an ovation, which they duly did.

Just two years earlier, Trump hadn’t even heard of Pratt, despite the Aussie billionaire winning $450,000 by betting $100,000 on Trump to win the 2016 election.

Pratt soon changed that.

According to The New York Times, his wife, Revere, donated $US1 million ($1.55 million) to Trump’s inauguration, which Pratt could not do as an Australian citizen.

As the Times said in October last year, no one was more adept at exploiting the Trump presidency than Pratt.

He also acquired a $US200,000 a year membership at Mar-a-Lago resort and put full-page ads in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal praising Trump policies and his job creation efforts.

As Pratt says on secret recordings reported in this publication: “My superpower is that I am rich.”

Anthony Pratt, then-Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and then-US president Donald Trump at a Pratt factory in Ohio in 2019.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

His assiduous grooming of Trump paid off quickly as the May 2018 dinner at Mar-a-Lago showed. And the following year, Trump was guest of honour at the opening of Pratt Industries’ $500 million paper mill in Ohio with then-prime minister Scott Morrison.

Pratt had a lot to celebrate.

Trump’s generous corporate tax cuts, from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, and depreciation allowances are estimated to have added around $US2 billion to Pratt’s wealth, on paper, thanks to his US packaging business.

If Trump had not been re-elected, these tax cuts, which he had enacted in 2017, would have expired next year. And the president-elect has promised to reduce the corporate tax rate even further to 15 per cent, further boosting the fortunes of his billionaire supporters like Pratt.

And no doubt there will be plenty of new opportunities to exploit, even if the relationship may have fractured slightly amid reports, including from this publication, of allegations of Pratt trying to buy access to Trump and divulging state secrets Trump had passed on to him.

The reports last year by this masthead and 60 Minutes uncovered separate audio recordings of Pratt talking about his relationship with “mafia”-like Trump and his claim of a $US1 million payment to Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in return for Giuliani attending his birthday party.

The covert recordings also reveal that Pratt had claimed Trump disclosed non-public details about US military action in Iraq and a private conversation with Iraq’s leader.

Pratt’s US odyssey has provided him with immense wealth, as the value of his company has ballooned.

Anthony Pratt and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago resort in May 2018. Credit: Michelle McMinn

However, sources at advisory firms who were not willing to speak on the record about such a sensitive matter regarding wealthy potential clients, said Pratt’s move to the US probably wouldn’t result in significantly lower income taxes for Pratt. State income taxes on high earners in New York are some of the highest in the US.

Indeed, Bloomberg reported this year how it is not uncommon to have New York’s private airports lined with dozens of private jets with take-off at times literally minutes to midnight for tax-friendly climates like Florida.

But with Pratt now in his 60s, wealth advisers suggest that a green card will help when it comes to handing over his incredible financial wealth to his family. This manoeuvre would be more complicated if he was not a US resident for tax purposes, even if it also means he is subject to estate tax on his wealth when he dies.

“Individuals must assume that owning foreign financial assets will be heavily scrutinised by the [Internal Revenue Service] and possibly taxed at higher rates due to special US tax laws related to non-US investments,” says US firm Cerity Partners.

An expert on global tax matters says Pratt will have options for another seven years before the tax issues get very complicated for any reversal of his US permanent residency.

“He’s either going as a medium-term plan or an ultimate plan of citizenship and living his life out in the US,” they say.

Pratt’s own comments suggest the latter is his future and retirement is not going to come into it: “There’s been a lot of growth here in America and I want to continue that. I want to keep doing this until the day I die.”

With Sumeyya Ilanbey

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