Builders get revenge on Pankaj Oswal, Radhika Oswal
The Oswals are back.
And — praise Vishnu! — isn’t their multi-billion-dollar Supreme Court case against Shayne Elliott’s under-siege ANZ flushing out some amazing stories?
Here’s one concerning the “Taj on the Swan”, the $70 million palace that Pankaj and his “wifey” Radhika Oswal abandoned in Perth’s Peppermint Grove.
The purchase was a who’s who of the west. They bought the block from businessman Warren Anderson in 2007. The deal was brokered by celebrity real estate agent Willy Porteous — the husband of Lang Hancock’s widow Rose, whose extravagant taste was expressed in another Perth riverside mansion, “Prix D’Amour”, which was demolished a bit over a decade ago.
And now it’s the turn of the Oswals’ abandoned mansion. The shire of Peppermint Grove has scheduled its imminent demolition.
We have been told that could lead to perhaps the greatest archaeological discovery since Howard Carter and George Herbert found Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Oswal followers will remember that Radhika is a proselytising vegetarian.
She infamously banned meat in the lunches of the builders working on the construction of the mansion, which was to include a gym, temple, observatory with a revolving roof and parking for 17 cars.
The ban on ham sandwiches, meat pies and sausage rolls didn’t go down so well with the local workforce.
And so underneath the abandoned edifice — baked into its concrete foundation — lie hundreds of meat pies and sausage rolls, or so we have been told by construction contacts out west. Call it the revenge of the Aussie builder.
The restless sea
It’s a Palm Beach tragedy: Jill Wran’s $6m weekender has been devastated by the recent east coast storms.
The extent of the damage on the waterfront property — which is nestled just north of Sydney in the “Australian Hamptons” — became apparent to many neighbours over the Queen’s Birthday weekend.
It breaks our heart to report that one of Palmie’s most beautiful lawns now sleeps with the fishes — about half way out to the Barrenjoey Headland, according to local yachtsmen.
Hundreds of sandbags now buttress the property, which Wran bought from Nick Curtis for $6m. That sale was back in 2009 — a simpler age when Curtis chaired the rare-earths miner Lynas and his son Oliver Curtis, who will be sentenced for insider trading this week, was best known for introducing the “mullet” hairstyle to Sydney Catholic private school Riverview. The battered property appears in need of a good engineer. Just as well former Leighton Holdings chief Wal King has an enormous weekender — itself testament to the powers of civil engineering — just a few hundred metres around the corner. Lend a tractor?
Wran is of course the wife of the late Neville Wran, the long-time NSW Labor premier who later went into investment banking with current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
And continuing the eastern suburbs’ CliffsNotes, Neville’s other close business partner Albert Wong is the Vaucluse neighbour of and local adviser to Jeremy Song, the son of Song Suowen, the Chinese billionaire who last week shelled out $260m for a 20 per cent stake in John Borghetti’s Virgin Australia.
The bell tolls
Septuagenarian Colin Bell might be stuck in corporate Australia’s longest meeting, but business at his Bell Potter Securities goes on.
This week Bell opens its 50c-a-share offer for the Mel Bridges-chaired Oventus Medical, a Brisbane-based maker of anti-snoring mouthguards.
The Bell Potter team working on the float is being led by Hugh Robertson, a close friend of Colin. Robertson returned to Bell Potter’s office at 101 Collins Street in February after a stint at Wilson HTM and a lunch on Flinders Lane.
Bell Potter is seeking to raise $12m for Oventus by June 30 — a notable drop from the $15m-$20m it was spruiking two months ago.
Perhaps the reduced raising will give some support to Oventus’s share price when it starts trading on the ASX on July 13.
Bell sure can’t afford another stinker after the horror performance of the online furniture retailer Temple & Webster it floated in December — two months before the retailer issued its debut profit warning.
After listing at $1.10, stock in Temple & Webster is down more than 80 per cent. It closed on Friday at 14.5c.
Temple & Webster is chaired by Carol Schwartz, the founding chair of The Women’s Leadership Institute Australia, and the person ANZ’s digital prophet Paul Edwards enlisted in his infamous Twitter war against Colin’s former employee Angus Aitken.
Some troglodytes have called it the worst ASX float of the past six months.
Not us, mind. Looks like proof that sexism is alive and well among online furniture consumers. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Colliers party revisited
So it turns out the racy video starring a Colliers International employee that we mentioned in Saturday’s paper was a redacted version. The video, which we have been running with this column online, is a highlights reel of the “flirty thirty”-themed birthday party thrown by Colliers agent “Huddo”.
It has been dubbed by some as the corporate equivalent of former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer’s wedding video. The slick production includes scantily clad attendees grinding, framing their cleavage for the camera and fellating a toy machinegun.
Still, the timing is a bit awkward — especially as at the 39-second mark, it appears to include a cameo by chief financial officer Sean Unwin, the same guy who is being sued by his former executive assistant Alexandra Marks for sexual harassment.
The extra-curricular production was online for more than a year, with no one objecting to it — until we asked Colliers about it on Friday.
And we have been told there was an earlier, raunchier cut of the video, which has since been removed.
So the version we got excited about was the wholesome one? They really are living on another planet to us over at John Kenny’s real estate services shop.
Mr Coffee and the Don
There have been more than Queen’s Birthday honours dished out over the long weekend.
Les Schirato has been awarded a United Nations Association of Australia lifework gong for his contribution to multiculturalism. “Mr Coffee” will have to wait until August to be awarded it by Governor-General Peter Cosgrove at a black tie event in Sydney.
Meanwhile, Simon “Don” Mordant has been appointed a trustee of the American Academy in Rome. Mordant, an executive co-chair at boutique investment bank Luminis Partners, adds this arts gig to his chair of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and ABC directorship.
The pair have more than new titles in common. Schirato and Mordant were shareholders in the Italian restaurant and produce chain Fratelli Fresh. They sold out to private equity firm Quadrant in April for an undisclosed sum amid exciting talk of a $1 billion market listing.
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
Freehills partner given notice over synagogue tweet
Herbert Smith Freehills leaders have voted to remove one of its longstanding partners, Damien Hazard, over a ‘deeply offensive’ tweet targeting Jeremy Leibler.