Cracks in Harry Stamoulis’s Toorak mansion facade

Illustration: Rod Clement.

It all seemed so perfect from the outside looking in. But all has not been well behind the soaring ­colonnade facade of rich-lister property developer Harry Stamoulis’s $70 million-plus Toorak mansion.

Margin Call hears that soft drink scion turned property mogul Stamoulis (who has a family fortune valued at $626m) hasn’t been happy with the $70m-plus development of his family’s dream St Georges Road monolith.

The Grecian-white edifice took the Krongold family’s Krongold Construction three years to build and was finally ready for occupancy in mid-2015.

It was built on the site of the former Baillieu family estate, which was purchased by Stamoulis in 2010 for $24m. The construction of the home — which has a ballroom to rival Claridge’s — set a record as Australia’s most expensive house build.

But we understand things haven’t gone smoothly since Stamoulis and his family moved into the behemoth.

Harry Stamoulis’s $70m-plus Toorak mansion. Picture: Ian Currie.

Despite the use of Krongold’s army of high-end tradies, client and builder have spent most of this year locked in a dispute over what Stamoulis considered to be defects in the commercial-sized project.

Until recently, a lack of common ground had the matter heading for the courts. However, we hear a quiet settlement to the nasty dispute has been achieved in recent weeks.

A Christmas miracle.

Power play

Suddenly there’s a surplus of former general-secretaries of NSW Labor on the jobs market.

As revealed in yesterday’s column, Eric Roozendaal last week resigned from his gig as CEO of billionaire Huang Xiang­mo’s property conglomerate, Yuhu Group Australia.

That was a week before one of Roozendaal’s successors at Sussex Street, Sam Dastyari,also set off to life outside of parliament.

The two departures were not unrelated.

It’s understood that working at Yuhu became decidedly less appealing when, as a result of media interest in the donor-fundraiser relationship between Huang and Dastyari, the Yuhu proprietor began to be written about as a person under ASIO’s surveillance.

And we gather Roozendaal’s Yuhu contract was up for negotiation next year, which also seems to have focused the former NSW treasurer’s mind.

Back in his Sussex Street days, Roozendaal was a legendary fundraiser — particularly among property developers.

Naturally, there has been some speculation that his next move would be another property play.

As it happens, it looks like that has already begun.

Back in May, Roozendaal set up a Mediterranean-named company Jaffa Property Group. He’s the sole director and shareholder.

That vehicle has had an acquisitive beginning. In July, it bought a two-bedroom high-rise apartment in North Sydney for $1.5m.

Then in September it bought a three-bedder townhouse in Croydon Park, in Sydney’s inner west, for $917,000.

Roozendaal appeared to pay cash for both properties in a $2.5m, three-month spending spree. Both are mortgage-free.

Also in his portfolio is a $1.9m three-bedroom water-view apartment in Double Bay, where the former pollie calls home. That one is mortgaged to NAB.

Still, it looks like Roozendaal can afford not to rush into his next venture.

Stoner unturned

While all the focus has been on the Labor Party, the remaining politician on the Yuhu payroll is Andrew Stoner, who was the Nationals leader and deputy premier of NSW under Barry O’Farrell and, briefly, Mike Baird.

Margin Call yesterday confirmed that Stoner remains on billionaire Huang Xiangmo’s Yuhu payroll, which he joined in late 2015, eight months after leaving parliament.

In his part-time work for Yuhu, former state trade minister Stoner provides advice on agricultural deals, such as beef cattle and seafood, which are a less publicised part of a group best known for its property developments.

Some observers think that, in addition to his excellent agribusiness advice, Stoner’s role was something of a political counterbalance to Eric Roozendaal’s Labor pedigree.

It will be interesting to see if the appointment of Yuhu’s new CEO continues its affiliation with the Labor Party — or, alternatively, if Stoner is deemed surplus to requirements. All should be clear in the new year.

League of their own

The sale of Sir Frank Lowy’s Westfield is a record-breaking $33 billion deal that features no Australian assets and has been driven from offshore.

But that won’t stop Aussie outposts of international advisory giants claiming league table credit for what is Australia’s biggest-ever takeover.

Swiss bank UBS wasted no time. On Tuesday night it was claiming its place on the Westfield deal team, declaring it a “banner day for UBS”, having also worked on the Transurban capital raising and gaining shareholder approval for Kelvin Barry’s long-awaited Tabcorp Tatts deal.

Nevermind that UBS was late to the Westfield party, believed to have brought inside the tent as recently as this weekend past, to assist boutique Rothschild as financial adviser to take over target Westfield.

Still, it’s diffused Rothschild’s 22-year Sydney-based veteran and head of real estate advisory in Australia and Southeast Asia Duncan Wilmer’s time in the sun, who now has to share the Westfield credential with the worker bees at Matthew Grounds’ UBS.

We tried calling Wilmer yesterday, but by early afternoon the Rothschild office was closed, with a recorded message revealing it was “outside business hours”.

With a fee for the deal mooted to be in the order of $20m, we’d be out celebrating too.

Locally, the advisory work for Unibail-Rodamco was led by Goldman Sachs’s investment banking chief Christian Johnson and Deutsche Bank’s Hugh Macdonald.

The rest of the week will now be taken up with selling the deal to investors, with the Belgian-born boss of Unibail-Rodamco, Christophe Cuvillier, 55, expected to be rolled out to this market potentially at the end of the week as the giant European property group works to bring Australian investors up to speed on its operations and the transformative deal.

Cuvillier lived in Sydney for three years from 1993, when he worked for L’Oreal running its luxury products division here.

Back then, he resided in Sydney’s Point Piper on Wunulla Road in a waterfront home that is now owned by Sarah Mayo of hardware supplier Mayo Hardware.