Afterpay riches land in Bondi

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

The Afterpay windfall continues to be poured into luxury Sydney property by the flush fintech pioneers. They might have gone their separate ways in the past few months, but two of the key players in the buy-now, pay- later success story have splashed out on new homes in North Bondi.

Michael Roth, a founding team member at Afterpay, has spent $8.03m, through buyers agency Cohen Handler, not far from Nick Molnar’s $10m purchase last year.

They were both living in small flats in Bondi before what proved to be the dearest two sales on the headland last year.

Roth departed Afterpay last year after four years, going back to his sporting roots to create heyswysh, a start-up aimed at changing the way fans can interact with athletes.

The view from Nick Molnar’s place.

It offers fans a platform where they can buy a personalised video from their favourite sports star, who’ll send back birthday messages, motivational clips or some banter. Some of the revenue through the platform is being donated to charity partners Starlight Children’s Foundation and Variety.

Roth spent time as a lawyer and player manager at Inspire Sports Management after starting out as a membership intern at the Canterbury Bulldogs.

His new acquisition is a modern beach house, created by Star Wars: Attack of the Clones production designer Aaron Crothers and partner Jackline Sassine who’d knocked down a Californian bungalow.

Afterpay shares floated on the ASX at $2.95 midway through 2017 and are now trading near their $38 peak, giving the company a near-$10bn market capitalisation.

NRL’s talent trauma

Big-time NRL player agent Sam Ayoub has won his Federal Court case against two of his former employees who set up a rival sports management company.

Antoun Zibara and Patrick Angeli were ruled to have breached their duty of fidelity and loyalty when they set up Genesis Talent Management two years ago and poached 16 players.

The pair had been at Ultra Sports Management, established in 1996 by the veteran Ayoub, whose claim for compensation was put at $750,000.

Federal Court judge Andrew Greenwood has given Zibara and Angeli 10 days to produce their accounts to the court, before deciding the compensation.

While not signing up a large number, every NRL club is represented among Ayoub’s managed players. His Honour seemed especially impressed when Ayoub identified Jonathan Thurston as having been managed throughout his playing career. 

The duo quit the company in late 2017, seemingly having earlier envisaged their exit.

Zibara told Ayoub he was leaving to join a friend’s online business selling protein powder, but two months later set up Genesis Talent Management, despite a three-year non-compete clause. 

The opportunity to easily secure the players arose after all NRL-accredited agents received an advisory in 2017 notifying them of a new standard contract form.

The form included a break clause allowing players to terminate an agreement with an agency after their nominated agent left the agency. The new form did not require existing contracts to be altered, but Zibara persuaded the players to swap them over with his name as the nominated agent.

The judgment noted Richard Perry QC had his client Ayoub advise that although Zibara was good with the players, he lacked the ability to secure them the best possible deal.

Ayoub has had a busy week with the sought-after Rabbitohs young gun Adam Doueihi, who’s set to leave Redfern.

Chairman Lee Hagipantelis’s West Tigers lead the race to sign Doueihi.

Purplebricks passing

Purplebricks, the departing low-commission real estate agency, is down to the last property on its soon-to-close Australian website. The Upper Coomera, Queensland, property is under offer, having been listed over a year ago with $410,000 hopes. The website had four listings last week. 

When the London-based estate agency industry disrupter announced last May it would pull out, the new international chief executive Vic Darvey indicated it would take no further listings, but retain its operations until the very last sale.

The decision to close up shop came shortly after UBS suggested the company was not likely to make a profit in Australia for a few years.

The most recent sale was at Victoria Point in Queensland with a $375,000 townhouse through estate agent Stephanie Crawford, who has the last offering. While Purplebricks sold more than 5000 mostly low-budget homes after its 2016 launch, the company was spending about 84c in advertising to generate $1 of revenue. Its campaigns were fronted by the down-to-earth media personality Barry Du Bois.

Fires unite religions

It was a milestone moment in relations between Melbourne’s Jewish and Catholic communities this week as they came together to help bushfire victims.

The union was the brainchild of Smorgon family scion and former Western Bulldogs AFL chairman David Smorgon, who earlier this month put together a rich-lister working group to, as he puts it, “do something above and beyond” for those hit by the devastating fires.

On the group were Pratt family heiress Fiona Geminder, Ruth Alter, the wife of property developer Sam, and senior Minter Ellison partner Ian Davis.

In the past 2½ weeks the group has raised $2.5m from Melbourne’s Jewish committee led by billionaire Alex Waislitz, who had already pledged $1m for fire victims through his Waislitz philanthropic foundation.

The $2.5m sum does not include the $1m pledges made earlier this month by Jewish business leaders John Gandel and Anthony Pratt. And to prove rich-listers are good for their dough, Smorgon says all of the money is already in the bank.

The destination of the funds is being determined by an allocations group led by Reserve Bank director Carol Schwartz and Mirvac and Afterpay director Elana Rubin.

After considering a number of charities, Smorgon, Schwartz, Rubin and co settled on $1m going to St Vincent de Paul for a Back To School program. The funds will be used to rebuild communities with the specific focus of helping children and higher education students to get resettled back into their schools and resume their education as quickly as possible.

A further $1m of Smorgon’s kitty is being directed to causes favoured by the donors themselves, while Schwartz and Rubin are determining the charities that will be supported by the remaining $500,000.