Daniel Grollo’s Grocon weaves a tangled web

Grocon CEO Daniel Grollo.

Was the writing on the wall as far back as early September for Daniel Grollo ’s now failed Grocon construction group?

Or even before that?

As creditors of the 39 companies that the 50-year-old construction scion has placed in the hands of voluntary administrators from Korda Mentha prepare to meet (virtually) next Wednesday, they might want to ponder how things were shaping up in the months before the collapse.

Let’s take Grocon Pty Limited, of which Grollo is the sole director. His dad Bruno Grollo, 78, was director of the same vehicle for 17 years up to 2004.

According to a document lodged with the corporate regulator on October 27 and signed the day before by Grocon’s group general counsel Carmen Hollingsworth, directors of the company (that is, just Daniel Grollo) failed to sign a “solvency resolution” within the required two months of Grocon’s June 1 review date.

The mandatory statement on the company’s solvency was required by August 1.

This doesn’t mean that Grollo declared then that the company was insolvent and unable to pay its debts when they fall due, just that no statement on solvency had been made — either positive or negative.

Then a month after that solvency statement was lodged, Grollo called in Korda Mentha, with Mark Korda and Craig Shepard now calling the shots at the 39 busted entities, which have tipped over with combined debts of about $60m.

The family business has built many iconic developments including Crown Casino and Eureka Tower.

None of those companies, however, are associated with the group’s current development projects.

Margin Call notes several new corporate entities were created in the period from July to November this year that boast Daniel Grollo as sole director and Hollingsworth as company secretary.

All are ultimately owned by GCN Projects Pty Ltd, of which Daniel Grollo is sole shareholder.

The new outfits include the likes of Grollo Construction Management Pty Ltd and Grocon Project Operations Pty Ltd, the latter of which was created just a few weeks before administrators were called in.

It’s an increasingly complex web.

Cooking up a storm

His name might be tarnished in the restaurant game, but fallen celebrity chef George Calombaris is carving out a new living following the spectacular, multimillion-dollar collapse at the start of this year of his Made Establishment hospitality empire.

We’ve already heard of the now Arthurs Seat-based Calombaris’s 5pm Cookalong venture, where customers order a box of ingredients and then cook along with the former MasterChef star via a YouTube video.

But that only appears to be a part of the chef’s financial way forward.

Illustration: Rod Clement

As a spin-off to the cooking venture Calombaris has also created a new vehicle Beta Innovations Pty Ltd, of which he is a director, along with his Los Angeles-based Aussie chef mate Curtis Stone and Melbourne businessman Theoharis Pourounidis, whose family owns the successful Bambis homewares group.

Stone and Pourounidis are already partners via their Hong Kong-based Foodfight Ltd, which has developed a range of cookware stamped with Stone’s name for home cooks

Now Foodfight, via a new subsidiary Beta Group Holdings, has joined with Calombaris as co-shareholders in Beta Innovations, which looks to be launching another range of homewares leveraging the 5pm Cookalong concept under Bambis’s well-known Salt&Pepper range.

“Make sure you have everything you need to cook along with George at home!” the website says.

Calombaris recently sold his Toorak mansion, which was actually in his wife Natalie Tricarico’s name, for $4.75m, after first putting it on the market at about the same time as Made Establishment was placed into the hands of voluntary administrators and then receivers.

The group collapsed following a wage underpayment scandal across its restaurants and eateries.

Much has changed for the famous chef this year.

Recent weeks have also seen the demise of the GaryGeorge&Matt Pty Ltd corporate vehicle that Calombaris created with former fellow MasterChef judges Gary Mehigan and Matt Preston, who are now working for Kerry Stokes’ Seven Network.

The entity, which was created early last year when the trio believed their power was at its peak and they began negotiating for renewal of their contracts with Ten, has now been deregistered.

What a sad culinary flop.

Money to burn

The seas might get bumpy at times, but it seems life as a trusted Packer lieutenant can be lucrative.

On the corporate front for billionaire James Packer’s private Consolidated Press Holdings, legal counsel Catherine Davies has had plenty to keep her busy this year with the unfolding NSW Casino Authority’s inquiry into Crown Resorts’ suitability to run a casino in Sydney.

Packer, via his ConsPress, has 36 per cent of Crown, with former NSW judge Patricia Bergin hearing evidence from Packer over three days in October, as well as appearances by other key CPH execs Mike Johnston and Guy Jalland.

Billionaire James Packer before the NSW Casino regulator inquiry in October.

But Davies, who is also CPH company secretary — the hand that signs the official forms — has also found time to relocate to Sydney’s fashionable eastern suburbs from her former home in inner west Birchgrove.

Davies, 51, has quietly purchased a mansion on Woollahra’s exclusive Wallaroy Crescent for $5.6m in a deal that was finalised at the end of September — just as the Bergin inquiry was starting to fire.

Before that in July, Davies sold her much less imposing Birchgrove home for $2.725m.

She’s plugged the difference with the help of a mortgage from Matt Comyn’s Commonwealth Bank.

Meantime, as Jalland beds down his new digs in Monaco after recently moving from fashionable Chelsea in London, Margin Call can report that Johnston (who with Jalland endures on the Crown board as Packer reps) remains steadfastly a resident of Cronulla, or Burraneer to be more precise.

Johnston has held the waterfront bolthole for two decades, which now sees him just across the bay and around the bend from ScoMo’s place at Dolans Bay.

Day in court

Former Blue Sky director Elaine Stead has described how she was “utterly mortified” at being the subject of columns by Nine Entertainment reporter Joe Aston, saying she “knew this would be a death knell for my career”.

In her first appearance before a Sydney court on Wednesday, Stead took questions from her counsel Sue Crysanthou SC and told the court her mental health had been “obliterated” and she was humiliated that the stories were still available online, saying they had undermined her reputation as a venture capitalist.

And just like any true VC, there was a Warren Buffett quote befitting the occasion. Quoting the investing legend, Stead said “reputation is built in 20 years and can be destroyed in 20 minutes” — or in her case by two stories by the newspaper’s gossip columnist.

Drilling down on the wording used though the stories, Stead said the phrase “venture capital pyromaniac” hit hardest, ultimately driving her to feelings of powerlessness and prompting her to reach out to the paper’s editor Michael Stutchbury after the first piece was published in February 2019.

That had not been her first interaction with the Fin’s fearless leader however, with the two first meeting at a dinner party held by Mark Carnegie, who Stead now counts as an employer after he vehemently defended her in the press.

Her admissions of personal trauma came after a lengthy list of witnesses were called before the court, including former colleague Alexandra Grigg and sister Olivia, whose family of five lives with Stead in Adelaide.

A who’s who of the start-up scene, including angel investor Alan Jones, not to be confused with the former radio personality though he said he had often been mistaken for him, and advisor Monica Bradley, also gave the court a brief insight into the jargon of the industry, with the phrase “start-up ecosystem” even requiring clarification from the judge Michael Lee.

Just be thankful for now no one mentioned a pivot.

Grocon’s tangled web

Calombaris cooking up a storm

Money to burn at CPH

Elaine Stead’s day in court