James Packer embraces new business ventures after tumultuous years
After a tumultuous time, James Packer says he’s back on the front foot with new tech, property and film investments boosting his wealth on The List - Richest 250.
At West Buttermilk Estate, the multimillion-dollar Aspen home of James Packer, stunning views from floor-to-ceiling windows of the 18th century-inspired property highlight the picturesque Colorado snow country of Mount Daly, Mount Sopris and Owl Creek Valley.
Just up the hill, hidden in a grove of Aspen trees, is the sprawling Mopani Estate property owned by Packer’s good friend, Lachlan Murdoch.
As Packer, whose wealth has risen to $5.1bn on this year’s The List - Australia’s Richest 250, gazed out at the winter scenery from his favourite couch in West Buttermilk’s living room, he has felt satisfaction for the first time in a while with his corporate life.
“2024 was the first good year I’ve had for a long time, performance wise, with my business,” he says. “It was terrific to be finally back on the front foot.”
It’s a much more tranquil existence than the heady days of a decade ago when he regularly crisscrossed the world in his private jet to Israel, Macau, Hollywood, South America and Europe, with the occasional visit back to his Australian homeland.
It is now well documented that the stresses of building a global casino empire and mixing with some of the world’s most powerful figures in global politics, business and entertainment – while simultaneously battling his sister over the split of their legendary father Kerry’s estate – drove him to the third mental breakdown of his life.
The 2025 edition of The List – Australia’s Richest 250 is published on Friday in The Australian and online at www.richest250.com.au
Now, in business at least, Packer is enjoying a quieter life after banking a cool $3.3bn from the sale of his shareholding in casino giant Crown Resorts to private equity firm Blackstone in the final week of the 2022 financial year.
His transition from front- and back-seat driving Crown for so long to being purely an investor has seen him part ways with a cohort of long-trusted advisers in favour of a couple of cleanskins.
Open Evidence play
The most influential has been Canadian-born technology entrepreneur, artist, and poet Daniel Nadler. The 41-year-old has a PhD from Harvard where he worked on new econometric and statistical approaches to modelling low-probability, high-impact events.
Today Nadler’s technology company, OpenEvidence, is working on using AI to build the world’s best database for healthcare information. It is Nadler’s second AI company. His first, Kensho Technologies, was sold for $US550 million in 2018.
Packer was the first external investor in Xyla, the parent company of OpenEvidence, when he put $US10 million ($15.94 million) into the firm in July 2022 in a capital raising that valued it at more than $US400 million. Legendary investment banker Ken Moelis, who has long been close with Packer, also backed the raising.
Packer, who has previously described Nadler as a “genuine polymath” and an expert in AI, reveals they met through a mutual friend, American movie director Bennett Miller, whose work includes Academy Award-nominated films Capote (2005), Moneyball (2011) and Foxcatcher (2014). Miller has previously been entertained by Packer at the Cannes Film Festival.
Over the past year, it has been Nadler’s Midas touch in picking technology stocks that has delivered in spades for Packer’s private company, Consolidated Press Holdings.
Previously, CPH ran its technology strategy across 24 different US stocks, but Nadler significantly narrowed its focus.
“We made for CPH a sizeable allocation of capital to a fund my friend Daniel Nadler runs for me, called the CPH 2030 fund. As you would gather by the name, that fund invests in companies that Daniel believes AI is going to affect most,” Packer says. “The 2030 fund returned over 100 per cent in 2024 for CPH. Daniel’s performance in the 2030 fund, as we internally call it, is the primary reason we have had such a good year.”
The 2030 fund is worth about $2 billion, which now accounts for 40 per cent of Packer’s net worth, with significant holdings in chipmakers Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company; Facebook-parent Meta; and Spotify.
“I think the most profound advice Daniel has given me is that we are still in the early innings of AI, and the revolutions that are going to take place are just beginning to be seen now,” Packer says.
Inner sanctum departures
His association with Nadler came ahead of the left-field appointment in late 2023 of Sydney accountant Lawrence Myers as CPH’s chief executive.
The Myers move coincided with the departures of Packer’s long-time CPH lieutenants Guy Jalland and chief financial officer Mike Johnston from the billionaire’s inner sanctum and his investment committee. Nadler and Myers now sit with Packer on the CPH Investment Committee, which oversees the group’s investments. Magellan founder Hamish Douglass, who joined the committee in 2022, has stepped down from the role.
Over the past year, Myers has been transitioning CPH to a simplified structure as a passive investment group.
“Since he came on board things are going better for CPH,” Packer says of Myers. “Lawrence and I take Daniel’s lead. Daniel’s results for me have been spectacular.”
CPH’s latest unconsolidated accounts lodged with the corporate regulator last year showed it recorded a profit of more than $590 million in the year to June 30, 2024, compared to $216.9 million a year earlier. Annual revenue was $1.5 billion, up from $562.6 million in 2023, and $120 million in dividends were paid to Packer over the year.
In line with Packer’s desire to stay away from operating businesses, Myers has also been working to allocate CPH’s capital to Australian property development through an alliance with former Crown executive Todd Nisbet and his firm NPACT, which launched in early 2023.
“In terms of the other areas that CPH is looking to do things, I have a joint venture with Todd Nisbet who I know from my days at Crown and whom I deeply respect,” Packer says.
“The property plays with Todd are because I like Todd, I like building things, and I believe we will achieve good returns. There is some portfolio diversification, too. I think Lawrence and Todd working together can add some real value.”
Diverse investments
One of Nisbet’s key partners is Tim Price, who founded developer Time & Place which is building luxury apartment developments at Sydney’s Manly, Potts Point, and Surry Hills, and in Melbourne.
“They (Packer and Nisbet) are really passionate about projects in great locations and building a strength in that space,” Price said last year.
Separately, NPACT is backing an apartment development in Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay by prolific local developer Third.i, which has residential and commercial projects across NSW.
Overseas, a property project close to Packer’s heart also looks set to finally become a reality this year: The Nobu Beach Inn on the Caribbean Island of Barbuda.
In 2015, Packer and Hollywood legend Robert De Niro bought the derelict site of the former K Club resort – a known spot for the rich and famous, including being a favourite holiday spot of the late Princess Diana – and promised to develop it into a luxury resort.
After years of delays securing planning approvals and the consent of the locals, the resort now looks set to open later this year and carry the same name as De Niro’s Nobu restaurant chain, in which Crown invested more than $100 million for a 20 per cent stake before selling last July for $266 million.
“This time we are going to do things differently.”
But the move that has seen Packer return to the headlines in recent months was the revelation he had bought back into Hollywood movie company RatPac Entertainment, reuniting him in business with movie producer Brett Ratner.
In January it was announced that RatPac had begun filming a $US40 million documentary on American First Lady Melania Trump, to be distributed exclusively by Amazon.
“RatPac has got a new lease of life without any further financial contribution from me with the Melania Trump film/documentary that Brett Ratner is directing, and hopefully it can keep going from here,” Packer says. “I bought back a 50 per cent share of RatPac, and for a nominal sum, a couple of years ago.”
Packer and Ratner combined their surnames for the venture’s name when it was launched in a blaze of publicity in late 2012, and it was Ratner who introduced Packer to music diva Mariah Carey, to whom he was engaged to be married before their relationship ended in 2016.
RatPac’s biggest hits during Packer’s first act included The Revenant, Birdman, Creed, Gravity, The Lego Movie, American Sniper, Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla.
Packer sold his stake in RatPac in April 2017 to Access Entertainment, a part of British billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, after losing $100 million on the venture.
Later that year he claimed he had done more for Ratner in RatPac than what he received in return.
“This time we are going to do things differently,” Packer now says of RatPac Act Two, inferring there will be a tighter focus on costs.
For example, RatPac will receive a portion of the proceeds of the Melania Trump film without having to put up any of the funding. “To be fair to Brett, he’s already demonstrating that by convincing Melania to want to work with him, and for Amazon to pay so much for the film. This film will be significantly profitable for RatPac.”
Hollywood connections
Ratner was with Packer and the billionaire’s partner, model Renee Elizabeth Blythewood, when they dined with Donald Trump in mid-January ahead of the Presidential inauguration at the President’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Southern Florida. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk was also at the table.
In Hollywood, Packer has also teamed up with former NBC Universal chair Ben Silverman to produce documentaries for streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+.
“I am involved with Eugene Jarecki on a documentary about Julian Assange, and also with Oliver Stone on his next movie,” Packer says. The Assange documentary is titled The Six Billion Dollar Man and is set to be released this year.
Despite enjoying success in business again and being a proud father of three children to his second wife Erica, who now lives in London and with whom he remains close, Packer’s health and fitness battles remain ongoing.
He shocked the world last September by revealing graphic details of his medication regime, and his thoughts of suicide at the lowest points of his life. He also revealed he was taking Ozempic, but was still gaining weight due to his sugar addiction.
The revelations went even further than the countless he offered in his biography, The Price of Fortune: The Untold Story of Being James Packer, published in 2018.
In 2023, Packer made a $7m gift to the University of NSW to research mood disorders and promote medical understanding of the conditions, after publicly revealing he had been diagnosed as bipolar.
The gift established the James Packer Chair in Mood Disorders and is funding a team of researchers at the university.
For the past five years, Packer has never shied away from speaking about his personal battles and now says he has no regrets about being so open with the world.
“The mental health segment on (current affairs program) Spotlight that I did (last year), I have felt no remorse for doing that,” he declares.
“On the contrary, several people have said to me that it helped them a little bit. That is all I was hoping to achieve.”
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