By Stephen Brook and Samantha Hutchinson
Some five months have passed since CBD revealed celebrity chef Shannon Bennett was quietly shopping the Toorak home he owned with his former long-term partner, actress Madeleine West.
Now it appears the home is inching closer to a sale.
A caveat has been quietly placed on the Lansell Road mansion, which Shannon Bennett bought with former partner Madeleine West for $16 million in 2018.
A caveat has been quietly placed on the Lansell Road mansion, which Bennett bought with one-time Neighbours star West for $16 million in 2018. A caveat can be put on a property as an early claim of ownership when a home has been sold but not yet settled. It can also be used by a party to protect their interest in a home and block a sale.
The pair, parents to six children, barely spent any time in the home. Within months of the purchase, they had moved to Byron Bay. By September of that year, they had separated.
CBD noted back in March that Kay and Burton’s Ross Savas and Marshall White’s Marcus Chiminello had been quietly spruiking the mansion to cashed-up buyers, with price expectations of up to $17 million. Not that either were prepared to talk about it at the time. Bennett and West were similarly tight-lipped on Wednesday when contacted separately.
Could the pair have nabbed a buyer in the middle of a pandemic? Possibly.
But, it’s also possible the trophy home has emerged as one of the biggest joint assets in a settlement understood to be underway between the two partners.
The caveat on the home was lodged by an ABN number, controlled by the Sydney-based solicitor Farshad Amirbeaggi, who did not return calls. His specialty? Dispute resolution, litigation, insolvency and asset preservation. The fun stuff, obviously.
Byron Bay Bennett
But there’s more Bennett news.
More recently – and quietly – Bennett has joined forces with another of the country’s most wealthy investors.
Celebrity chef Shannon Bennett in 2017.Credit: Simon Schluter
Company records show Bennett has entered a corporate venture with well-heeled social impact investor Danny Almagor on a project named The Village Well Northern Rivers. Named in reference to its Northern NSW location, the Byron Bay-based company describes itself as an "innovative lending and mentoring initiative ... designed to support local businesses that are contributing to building regenerative and resilient communities in our region".
If Bennett is looking for new backers, he appears to have made contact at a very good time.
The Melbourne-based Almagor is married to publisher and fellow impact investor Berry Liberman of Melbourne's billionaire Liberman family. Through their family office, Almagor and Liberman jointly own the Impact Investment Group, which offloaded Byron’s Beach Hotel for $100 million last November.
Bennett showed his prowess in landing minted investors in 2016, when Singaporean billionaires Robert and Philip Ng snapped up a major stake in his Vue Group hospitality empire. That arrangement came to an end in April when Bennett sold a final tranche of 4.7 million shares to the Ngs' Far East Organisation.
As part of the sale, Bennett got to keep Burnham Bakery and Piggery Cafe, inside the Burnham Beeches estate in Sherbrooke, which he is developing along with investor Adam Garrison.
Scott Briggs and Roman Quaedvlieg Credit: Illustration: John Shakespeare
Avengers Assemble
Scott Briggs, the former Liberal Party official, and Roman Quaedvlieg, former Commissioner of Border Force, both know what it is like to face the blowtorch.
For Briggs, his friendship with Prime Minister Scott Morrison led to him quitting as head of a consortium bidding for a $1 billion visa processing contract. For Quaedvlieg, it was when he was sacked by the Governor-General on government advice for helping to get his girlfriend a job at Sydney Airport.
So the fact that Briggs and Quaedvlieg are now in business together was not a piece of news CBD expected to be bringing readers.
Briggs (now a partner at DPG Advisory Solutions, founded by another ScoMo confidant, David Gazard) is chair of PACE First, a crisis security management company.
The company is run by Shaun Filer, who has a military and emergency medicine background and a degree in journalism. The pair met in 2011 when Briggs was a Nine Entertainment Co executive and the network hired Filer to extract several journalists trapped in Cairo during the Arab Spring. Nine is the owner of this masthead.
In 2016 the pair teamed up to found PACE First and are the major shareholders, along with chief financial officer Cormac Flannery. But there’s a new addition to the share registry, in the form of Quaedvlieg, just appointed chief operations officer at the firm.
PACE First boasts a lengthy line-up of consultants, although it is unclear how active they are in the business. Former ABC correspondent Peter Cave used to conduct its safety training for ABC and Reuters journalists until he quit abruptly about a year ago.
The company offers risk management, extraction plans and crisis negotiation plans, often for insurers of business executives.
Filer tells us Quaedvlieg's experience is "highly sought after in the international security, risk and assistance space" and his government connections have helped our team with several complex repatriations of sick Australians, including a businessman from Papua New Guinea.
However, Filer is anxious to downplay the political connections of his chair. "PACE First is 100 per cent apolitical and always will be – our focus is to have people that can help Australians get home when they are sick, injured or in an unsafe place." A comfort.