The fortune tellers reveal tales of losses and wins over the years
Inside the wins, losses and lessons learned from some of our most successful Australians as they reveal the warts-and-all tales of their wealth building.
The Fox family mansion on Irving Road in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Toorak looks imposing as you stand before its grand front gates.
On a cool, sunny morning in March 2023 they opened before me and I walked up a grand front path to be greeted at the front door by a smiling but hobbling Paula Fox – a legacy of recent knee surgery – who shook my hand and ushered me into a sitting room for her first ever media interview.
Paula looked a tad nervous, but was eager to get into the discussion. After only 30 minutes we were done. One of the most significant interviews of my career had taken just a half an hour. But Paula wasn’t one to waffle – her answers were direct, to the point and honest.
After the interview she took me on a tour of the spectacular gardens, including showing me a bunch of stunning roses behind the tennis court that were specially named after her.
She let me take photos, just for my private collection.
Many people have asked me how I got Paula to talk, and for that I have to thank one of her three sons, Andy, who I have known for many years.
But I was also lucky to have built trust over more than a decade with the Fox family. In 2010 I interviewed Andy’s brother David, his first and – to this day – only media interview.
I’ve also interviewed Lindsay Fox over the years, as well as having an unforgettable 90 minute off-the-record coffee with him in late 2019 where he mused endlessly about family, fortune and the meaning of life.
Not a word of that discussion was published because he requested it be off the record, which was immensely frustrating at the time. But keeping my word would pay handsome dividends four years later.
It was not the first time in my career that patience paid off to secure a big interview. But even the best can come by pure chance.
That was the case more than a decade ago with Lindsay’s great friend, the late legendary businessman David Hains.
I had often walked past the elaborate building known as Portland House at the top end of Collins Street in Melbourne wondering what lay behind its grand, solid-oak door.
In the early months of 2009, I was to find out.
I long knew of the legend of Hains, but only dreamed of one day getting the chance to meet him.
The opportunity came via Ron Walker, the late Fairfax Media chairman and a long-time friend of Hains. Paradoxically Hains had called Walker to complain about the accuracy of his write up in the annual Rich List published by BRW magazine, owned by Fairfax.
Walker was sympathetic, but suggested Hains – in response – decide for once to tell his story in his own words.
As I knew Walker well, he gave my esteemed AFR colleague Andrew Cornell and I the opportunity to pursue the story, the first-ever interview with Hains.
I’ll never forget our first meeting with the reclusive billionaire in his dark, wood-panelled office.
After we breathlessly ascending three flights of creaking, carpeted stairs (Hains later had a lift installed for his beloved long-time secretary Marlene), Andrew and I entered and sat on old leather armchairs.
When Hains entered the room, he shook our hands and sat in his own grand chair, his green, bakelite phone within easy reach.
He was polite and charming, but cautious. He warned us that he had not told his sons that he was even meeting with us – let alone doing an interview – and that the whole project could still implode once he did.
After initial on-the-record interviews, that day duly came. I’ll never forget the morning Hains walked into his office to greet us with looks that could kill.
He had bad news – his “boys” had vetoed him talking publicly, the game was up. Inside I couldn’t stop cursing, but Andrew and I kept our eye on the ball. By the close of the hour, we had politely convinced Hains that he had gone too far to turn back.
He left the room with the resolve to finish the project and, with his sons’ subsequent support, duly did.
On the day the magazine piece was published, the AFR printed giant flyers for the story that were plastered outside newsagents up and down Collins Street. I remember Hains called me in shock to say he’d never seen his face so many times in front of him during his daily walk outside his office.
But no harm was done. Inside, I’m sure he was quietly chuffed.
The long game
In the years that followed the story, Hains and I would catch up for a relaxed off the record lunch at least twice a year, sometimes with my friend and colleague at The Australian, Rich 250 editor John Stensholt, who Hains also liked and respected.
The billionaire was especially interested in my book on James Packer, The Price of Fortune, published in 2018, and always asked after James.
Hains had his own table at the back of Cecconi’s restaurant – known as the billionaire table, given it was also the favourite haunt of Lindsay Fox and Solomon Lew – where we would meet.
In his final years, as he became hard of hearing and more frail, he preferred to order in sushi in his office. But he would always offer a glass of chilled fine Chardonnay to go with the meal.
He passed away at the end of January 2023.
To the end he was engaging, polite and always interested in what I was doing. He truly was one of the finest gentleman of Australian business. I miss him.
David Hains and Paula Fox are two of 32 stories of what it takes to make – and sometimes lose – a fortune that book publisher Michael Wilkinson generously asked me to compile for a new book titled The Fortune Tellers: Life Lessons for Success.
Michael also asked me to provide in the book anecdotes and reflections from more than 25 years sitting down one to one and gaining the trust of some of our most successful Australians.
The Fortune Tellers sets out stories of wealth building, sometimes warts and all. The wins, the losses and the lessons learned. Well-known patriarchs and matriarchs like Kerry Stokes, Nigel Satterley, Robert Millner, Sam Tarascio and Frank and Shirley Costa share not so well-known and, at times, raw human stories.
The book also features insights from the next generation of some famous families including Johnny and Markus Kahlbetzer, Jason Kimberley, Tom Millner and Matt Haymes, as well as a previously untold stories from a who’s who of Australia’s business community including Warren Anderson, Carol and Alan Schwartz, Peter and Suparna Cooper, Alan Wilson, Elana Rubin, Elizabeth Bryan and Jennifer Nason.
Most interviews appeared in my weekly column titled The Inner Sanctum, which is published in The Weekend Australian.
I am deeply thankful to the editors of the paper, led by editor-in-chief Michelle Gunn and business editor Perry Williams, for supporting my vision three years ago to start a column that tells the human stories of business.
I am often asked what are the most difficult interviews I have done over my career and what are the toughest topics to discuss with subjects.
Talking about children is always very difficult, as are occasions when there has been an illness or a tragedy that has impacted someone. Divorces are usually a no-go zone, but not always.
With some subjects, you obviously need to discuss those difficult issues – when you are aware of them – beforehand to get them comfortable to talk about them on the record. But there have been occasions when stunning revelations have come by complete chance.
I have also learned over a long career that deeply private, wealthy people rarely grant you an interview unless they want publicity for something they are doing – whether it is buying or selling an asset, raising capital or launching an initiative. But that comes with the territory.
Once you are in the door, I find many are happy to talk more expansively about their lives, even if they carry a famous name.
City rivalry
I have also often been asked about the difference between Sydney and Melbourne when it comes to private wealth. From my observation, I would say Sydney can be more transactional. In Melbourne, the networks are harder to crack, but when you do, they run deeper.
But a downside of the latter is that some of its older-world networks are inevitably “clubby” and as a result frustratingly shallow.
One question that I find stumps most in any interview I have conducted is “What is your greatest weakness.” The responses are always telling.
In any big interview, listening is key. But to really get people to explore their inner demons and trials, trust is fundamental. People need to be comfortable and feel implicitly that you will handle their revelations fairly.
Minders or advisors to the subject are generally present on a zoom or in person for a big media interview – sometimes, there can be three or four on a call or in the room.
Some of these people have been incredibly important and helpful just to reassure the subject that everything is going to be okay. Some of the classiest simply listen and say nothing. Others, sadly, have been more of a hindrance.
Over nearly 30 years in journalism, I don’t think there is any subject who has called me after an interview and claimed I treated them unfairly.
There were quite a few people who were a bit stunned by how graphic their story was or how open they were. Yet they respected the way that I presented them, even if it was warts and all.
I have great pride in the fact that as difficult as some of these stories are for the subject to tell publicly, people have respected the way that I told them.
I think that too often, we get obsessed in business journalism with share prices, numbers and strategies and forget there are human beings that run our companies.
Sometimes those human beings do the wrong thing, and when they do they should be absolutely held to account to the full force of the law or by their shareholders.
But too often there is not a proper appreciation of the amazing journeys of these people in business and what they have done for the country. Especially in private business.
From a journalistic perspective, in my experience private company CEOs and founders are inevitably more open than their public counterparts.
A public company CEO is usually incredibly scripted because they answer to a sharemarket, big investors and continuous disclosure rules, which are more stringent than they have ever been.
They often employ an army of minders to look after them.
But private interviewees are not bound by the same rules – they often answer only to themselves and their families.
Often because those people rarely talk in public, they can be energised by sitting down and talking to someone that they can trust.
Some of those who have their stories told in The Fortune Tellers will do it only once in their life. For me that is truly exciting and what keeps me in this industry, nearly 30 years on.
This is an edited extract from The Fortune Tellers: Life Lessons for Success, published by Wilkinson Publishing
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