Martin Moshal bids $14m for Watson Bay duplex, Gretel Packer buys Sydney’s Edgecliff for $26.5m

Over 300 bidders fought it out for the Victoria St poperty at Watsons Bay.

Margin Call can reveal that reclusive internet gambling tycoon Martin Moshal is the mystery buyer of a rundown Watson’s Bay duplex that sold for a staggering $6m above its reserve price at auction on Tuesday night.

Moshal already lives along the shoreline and snaffled up the property on Victoria St mere footsteps from secluded Camp Cove beach, for $14m.

It sounds like he was eager to acquire the land at any cost – his bid obliterated almost 300 rival bidders for the property.

The flurry of interest even led auctioneer Damien Cooley to describe it as the auction of the year.

The 22 Victoria St property.

The early speculation had been that billionaire Steven Lowy and wife Judy, who own neighbouring harbour-front properties on the street, might have been the buyers.

The Moshals and the Lowys are certainly well-acquainted and have acquired much of the limited space along the housing strip facing Camp Cove beach.

A co-founder of Entree Capital, Moshal is the cousin of Greg Moshal, of small business lender Prospa.

He also sits on Moriah College’s capital management advisory committee with Lowy, former Babcock & Brown boss Phil Green, former Barbeques Galore deputy chairman Robert Gavshon, and Pengana Capital director Jeremy Dunkel.

No reply when we contacted Moshal for comment.

Spending spree

Gretel Packer seems to be flexing considerable financial muscle in her march on Sydney real estate, paying $26.5m for a commercial building in the suburb of Edgecliff where she’s been running her family office, Ritam.

The 56-year-old billionaire snapped up the building on the corner of Ocean St and Old South Head Rd earlier this month with no requirement for a mortgage. In years past it was home to the Edgecliff post office and the electorate office of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, and presumably his ghost is too busy haunting Australian politics for Packer to need to sage-cleanse and call an exorcist.

Gretel Packer at her 50th birthday dinner. Picture: Jonathan Ng

The building generates an annual rental income of about $1m and is currently home to the corporate office of global horse racing giant Godolphin, founded by the billionaire ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum – and no doubt he’s a compliant tenant.

Documents filed say the purchase was settled on March 8 using a freshly created company, NML Edgecliff Pty Ltd, of which Packer is a director alongside Ritam managing director Glen Selikowitz – although she is the sole shareholder.

It follows news on Wednesday that she had thrown $9m at a sub-penthouse apartment in Potts Point’s Macleay Regis building, where she already resides, the plan being to unite her penthouse and the newly acquired spot into one giant mega-pad.

Packer had previously run her family office out of Hudson House on Sydney’s Macquarie St, in the same building where her on-and-off adviser Will Vicars runs his Caledonia Investments. Packer had bought the entire floor suite in Hudson House for $8.37m before selling it in 2021 for $13.5m.

Speaker losing voice

Anyone else notice something odd about Speaker Milton Dick’s voice this past week in parliament? No doubt a product of shouting down members to order every few seconds.

We noticed a slight lisp, a hoarseness of voice and other peculiarities with the Queensland Labor MP’s speech that spurred us to make inquiries.

It turns out the Speaker is, in fact, losing his voice and has taken to sucking on lozenges to keep the rabble in check.

If only they were mercifully better behaved.

Not Stoke’s yacht

Nigel Stoke, executive director of Pandora Securities, once told a journalist that a love of sailing could be found in the blood. His father loved it and the pastime was clearly passed down a generation, which is why the old salt is often found cruising Sydney Harbour in Fidelis, his classic yacht launched from Auckland in 1964.

No such love to be found, however, for Formula 1 racing. Stoke assures us he has no interest in the sport and was not to be found in the exotic desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia last week for the grand prix, as Margin Call eagerly reported.

Nigel Stoke aboard Fidelis – but not the one at the Jeddah Yacht Club. Picture: Richard Jupe

Much to our dismay, it turns out the Fidelis sighted at Jeddah Yacht Club was merely a swanky impostor with an identical name, and not the Fidelis dear to Stoke’s heart that captured line honours in the 1966 Sydney to Hobart race.

As Stoke told us on Thursday: “Fidelis has raced and cruised more than 200,000 nautical miles around the Tasman, across to New Zealand, up to the Solomon Islands and parts of the Pacific. She has yet to head west and we have no plans to go to the Middle East!”

A member by fluke

Ben Dawkins, an embattled lawyer who’s been elected on a fluke to the West Australian parliament, appears to be trying to set things right. Dawkins is facing 42 charges of breaching family violence restraining orders that were laid after his preselection – but that was before he received news on Monday that he had secured a seat in parliament from a hopelessly unwinnable spot on Labor’s upper house ticket. A technicality paved the way for it.

This was never meant to happen, as even WA Premier Mark McGowan conceded: “It was never our expectation that he would be a member of parliament, but in any event that’s the situation we face.”

For now, Dawkins hasn’t even set foot inside the building and he’s already on the road to being expelled from the party due to the charges. It’s more than likely he’ll be sworn in as a crossbench MP when the ceremony takes place in a week.

Regardless, he became eligible for his $161,868 parliamentary salary from Tuesday, on a day when he spent many hours in Fremantle Magistrates Court dealing with his pending legal matter. He pleaded guilty to the charges and then seemed to spend a good deal of time trying to undo that decision.

As for the salary, we’ve learned that he tried to refuse payment for that particular day except he was told it wasn’t possible. Margin Call understands he’s now decided to donate that day’s portion to an undetermined charity in his home town of Nannup.