Debt-averse billionaire Packer fires up finance vehicle; Dinosaur Corbett’s prehistoric language

James Packer’s name isn’t listed on the company.

For many years now expatriate Australian billionaire James Packer has been averse to debt.

When he found himself over-geared and stressed to the max amid the settlement of his late ­father Kerry Packer’s estate with his sister Gretel Packer, the former Crown Resorts owner went on a program of big-ticket asset sales.

The divestments, which included yachts, jets and even ­majority control at the time of Crown, meant he could pay off the billions that he and his private company Consolidated Press owed to lenders.

Packer later said that at the time, when debt had topped $5bn at CPH and Crown, he “was terrified”.

How curious then to see the creation of a new Australian corporate entity within Packer’s CPH empire (which ultimately is domiciled in the Bahamas) called Conspress Finance Limited, featuring two of his most trusted financial lieutenants, ­Michael Johnston and Michael Uzunovski, as directors.

Michael Johnston is part of Conspress Finance.

Packer’s name isn’t linked to the company at all, he’s just there as ultimate owner of its two ­already existing shareholder companies.

Given the businessman’s fraught relationship with being heavily geared, we wonder whether the new vehicle has something to do with the Sydney residential property development The Chimes in the inner east’s Potts Point in which he has about a 10 per cent stake.

The project is being developed by Melbourne outfit Time & Place, which has been working for more than two years with The Chimes’ owners and City of Sydney Council to acquire units in the existing block. The estimated $85m buy-up has taken longer than all parties had hoped, but Time & Place has recently gone past the 75 per cent trigger point for compulsory acquisition of the remaining apartments. It already has caveats on apartments that it is yet to buy.

All that means the consortium needs money to bring the buyout to fruition, before the old building can be demolished in favour of construction of the new tower.

As Margin Call has revealed previously, Packer is already bankrolling Time & Place’s Hotel Lindrum project in the Melbourne CBD.

One of the billionaire’s companies is one of two mortgagees on the title of the hotel, which was bought by Time & Place in March for about $50m from rich-lister Robert Magid.

With interest rates at record highs, it makes sense to be a lender rather than a borrower any day.

Backing for Bill

Former Woolworths CEO and Fairfax chairman Roger Corbett has launched an 11th-hour bid to get a former Woolies colleague Bill Wavish elected to the board of Endeavour Group, with a media blitz and video to Endeavour shareholders.

Corbett is backing the Bruce Mathieson campaign to get an extra director on to the Endeavour board.

Corbett, an Endeavour shareholder, was out this week lauding Wavish as one of the best retail executives in the country – never mind he was on the board of electronics retailer Dick Smith just before it collapsed and executive chair at department store group Myer before its disastrous IPO.

But Corbett, whose mateship goes way back with billionaire Mathieson, having done the original deal at Woolies to buy Mathieson’s ALH pub group and most recently via the pair’s directorships and status as major shareholders in Mayne Pharma, says the problems arrived at Dick Smith after Wavish left.

But that’s not how proxy firm Glass Lewis – which advises about a third of the Endeavour register – sees it.

Former Woolies chief Roger Corbett. Picture: Hollie Adams

Glass Lewis said Wavish had in court proceedings acknowledged his role in encouraging the business strategy that led to Dick Smith’s downfall.

Glass Lewis went on to say Wavish’s “track record on corporate boards may raise serious questions around his candidacy at Endeavour”.

Along with Glass Lewis, every other proxy firm has recommended against Wavish’s appointment. How wrong can they all be?

Wavish was Corbett’s former right hand man at Woolies, which spun off Endeavour and still has a stake of about 10 per cent.

Corbett, in his support of Mathieson, also took issue at being referred to as a retail “dinosaur”, which he found “pretty demeaning”.

Margin Call, however, couldn’t miss in an interview aired on the weekend with Sky’s Ross Greenwood, in which Corbett, 81, recounted his trip last week to the Endeavour-owned Dan Murphy’s in Sydney’s Martin Place to buy a bottle of gin.

Corbett repeatedly referred to the team member who served him as “the girl”, language from a bygone era many now consider to be demeaning or belittling when used in reference to a woman.

It might have been considered normal around the board table in the ’70s, but in 2023 it’s the sort of language that carbon dates you as a stegosaurus.

Falling out of favour

How sad when a relationship goes sour. Even sadder when civility goes out the window and the level of discourse plummets.

Only four years ago Donald Trump was president of the United States and Australian packaging billionaire Anthony Pratt was in Trump’s own words “the most successful man in Australia”.

That was in September 2019 when Trump, in a campaign-like event, was opening Pratt’s new multibillion-dollar manufacturing facility in Wapakoneta, Ohio along with our own then prime minister Scott Morrison.

Now Trump has described Pratt – worth close to $28bn at last count by this publication – as a “red haired weirdo from Australia”.

“He’s a great man. And he’s my friend and I appreciate it. Thank you, Anthony,” Trump gushed as he opened the Pratt Industries plant and enthused about all the jobs economic activity being created.

Anthony Pratt has copped some mixed messaging from the former US president. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

“I want to thank you, Anthony, for everything you’ve done and Pratt Industries,” Trump went on as ScoMo smiled. “(Pratt) is definitely a man of his word.”

There were effusive words too for Pratt’s wife Claudine Revere, also part of the official party. “She’s a dynamo, she’s an incredible talent,” Trump raved of Revere, a successful businesswoman in New York in her own right.

“When I found out she was with Anthony, I said, ‘Wow’, that’s a combination that cannot be beat. That’s an impossible combination to beat”.

With friends like Trump, who needs enemies.