Big Flutter pays off for Caledonia

Cartoon: Rod Clement

Fund manager Will Vicars is about to give investors in his Caledonia co-investment fund an extra share of the spoils from one of the fund manager’s most satisfying big bets: the Canadian online gaming firm Flutter Entertainment.

Flutter, which last year merged with The Stars Group and is best known as the owner of bookmakers Paddy Power and Betfair, is one of Caledonia’s three big investments alongside US online real estate group Zillow and online food delivery giant Grubhub.

Flutter shares have doubled in value on the London Stock Exchange since March.

Vicars has just told his clients that Flutter is now a 30 per cent position in Caledonia’s flagship fund, above the 25 per cent target for maximum position size.

So he plans to make a distribution from the flagship fund to the co-investment fund, most likely at the end of the third quarter — around September 30.

The Australian reported last week that the co-investment fund, a long-only vehicle with substantially lower fees than Caledonia’s other funds, deli­vered a 20 per cent return in May and is up 28.6 per cent after fees this financial year.

A passage to India

As the ongoing trade disputes with China dominate the headlines, there’s been a coincidental push to build on the relationship with India, led by former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu.

The newly-minted Australian India Chamber of Commerce (AICC) has been put together to facilitate dialogue between businesses in Australia and India.

Back in 2012, the premier led the state’s then biggest-ever government trade mission to India with representatives from more than 200 Victorian companies.

Now, as the AICC’s founding patron, Baillieu is seeking national participation through its foundation members PwC, Minter Ellison, CPA Australia and Taj Hotels.

He’s been visiting India since 1974 in his backpacking days as an architectural student, and was there in February.

“It’s been something of a passion since my first taste of it,” he said. “It is incredibly dynamic.”

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission and federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg recently granted the final approvals for the Australia India Chamber to operate as a chamber of commerce.

Its formalisation comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s teleconference last week with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which he said would help “take our Australia-India partnership to a new level”.

Indeed, never before has the Australia-India relationship been as strong, with the AICC keenly advocating for the progressive implementation of an Australia-India Free Trade Agreement.

The AICC’s chief executive is Anoushka Gungadin, an entrepreneur who founded GlobalCQ.

“It is time that boardroom discussions progress from a dialogue of ‘Why India?’ and engage the question of ‘How India?’,” Ms Gungadin said.

Chris Mooney, the founder of the Planet Green Corporation, will chair the chamber, which has its offices in Scottish House, William Street, Melbourne. 

No doubt the AICC is getting insights from the former premier of NSW, Barry O’Farrell, too.

He’s Australia’s High Commissioner to India, having previously served as NSW special envoy for India.

Farrell and wife Rosemary have only just settled into their recently renovated New Delhi residence.

Whole new paradigm

Amid the dreaded everlasting post-game aches, there’s been some recompense for some well-connected retired AFL footballers who have backed the ASX-listed biopharmaceutical firm Paradigm.

Carlton legend-turned-investment-whiz Chris Judd headlined those fortunate investors who have more than doubled their money over the past year.

The shares were offered at $1.50 each, and they are now trading at over $3.20 after surging 70-plus per cent over the past month.

No COVID-19 cure, Paradigm Biopharmaceutical is simply trialling a treatment for osteoarthritis, an injury Judd struggled with during his career.

Paradigm chief executive Paul Rennie has adopted the strategy of repurposing drugs as a much quicker process than creating them from scratch.

There is a special access scheme in Australia that has treated more than 750 patients for whom other current standard treatments failed.

Rennie has spent five years securing the commercial rights and testing the viability of repurposing deep-vein thrombosis drug PPS (pentosan polysulfate sodium).

Judd’s former teammate Andrew Walker is still kicking, despite calling time on his AFL career in 2016 at age 29 due to severe knee pain.

The captain coach at Echuca in Victoria’s suspended Goulburn Valley Football League is an investor — and a recipient, too, of the injection course.

The Sydney Swan’s hall of famer, now fund manager, leaping Leo Barry is another investor. With Rennie from Adelaide, there are a few star retirees from across the border in South Australia, like Mark Ricciuto, who are in the Paradigm club.

Having secured the rights to the drug for injectable purposes from German pharmaceutical company Bene pharmaChem in 2015, the company went public at an issue price of 35c.

Since then it has been conducting trials into the effectiveness of the drug for the joint-destroying disease. Patients get two iPPS injections a week for six weeks.

Its New York office is overseeing the trial in a compassionate use program, treating 10 former players from the US National Football League following a Food and Drug Administration clearance after the former NFL player Mitch Marrow travelled to Australia to be treated for iPPS. Marrow has since joined Paradigm in an investor relations role for the US market.

Any final clinical trial will take at least 18 months, which means the company has another three years before the prospect of revenue in the US in 2023, with Australia potentially earlier, if its development and testing goes well.

Rennie, the 2014 co-founder, is the company’s biggest shareholder, and advised his 19 million shares were in escrow until December 2022.

Reno revival

The long lockdown has certainly prompted the planning of home renovations across the nation. And Afterpay co-founder David Hancock has joined the trend.

He’s planning a big one for his parkside Centennial Park mansion, so Margin Call doesn’t expect him to be getting any HomeBuilder funds.

Hancock, who remains a consultant at Afterpay after stepping away from the board, will be spending $3m on the renovation of the $8m mansion bought with wife Fiona late last year. The Lang Road deceased estate sits only a few doors away from their former home which they sold for $7m in 2015.

They currently reside in an Espie Dods-designed Paddington home that cost $7.65m in 2018.

This time last year Hancock sold 400,000 shares at $23 a share, with the $9.2m proceeds enough to cover the mortgage-free house purchase and its $500,000 stamp duty.

The Hancocks also own the Bowral trophy estate Kulkurra, which cost $3.775m in 2015.

Hancock hasn’t been the only Afterpay co-founder on a property spending spree since he, Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar floated the company at around $1 on the ASX in 2016.

The shares closed yesterday trading at 33c short of their intraday $54.85 record high. 

Eisen previously called Bellevue Hill home before selling on Beresford Road in 2017 when relocating to a $6.2m home in Melbourne’s Brighton with his wife, Samantha. He also spent $7.6m on The White House in Byron Bay.

Meanwhile, Molnar spent $10m on a clifftop home on North Bondi’s Ben Buckler with his wife, Gabrielle.