The entrepreneurial Jeff Allis and wife Janine, co-founder of Boost Juice and Retail Zoo, are reducing the family’s equestrian pursuits.
There’s a dispersal sale of most of the horses, and their picturesque Surf Coast horse stud Epona Park has been listed for sale at $2.1m.
The decision was made while spending lockdown in Noosa.
It’s partly because their teenage children don’t get down to the farm that often, and partly because they want to concentrate on the post-COVID-19 recovery required for their many investments.
“Epona takes 70 hours a week and I’m doing that myself, now that the family aren’t getting down there,” Jeff said.
The five-year-old broodmare Seductive Response, sired by sprinter Snitzel, and nine-year-old Papillon Rouge, sired by Group 1 stallion Fastnet Rock, are up for sale through Inglis.
The bidding for Papillon Rouge saw it reach its reserve on Tuesday after reaching $37,500.
But he’s keep three horses, including Jessy Belle, which won the Group 2 $300,000 7 News Matriarch Stakes at Flemington in 2016.
It was 2012 when the Toorak couple bought the 38ha Winchelsea South farm, near Geelong, from breeder trainers Scott and Sharna Lockhart for $820,000.
Over the past eight years they have upgraded the facilities, including its dressage arena and 12 box stable complex.
The couple have also planted about 30,000 trees around the property, which is split in to 26 paddocks.
Epona, which has bred the likes of Snitzepeg, also from Snitzel, has been known to stable 50 horses at one time or another.
“I’ve enjoyed building up the stud, but it is time for someone else to take it on,” Jeff Allis said.
Abundant’s jump
Tony Crimmins’ hybrid plant breeder company Abundant Produce spent its last day on the ASX dealing with a pesky price query.
Its shares had jumped 158 per cent in morning trade, and the ASX query, sure enough, followed.
In the countdown before going private, there were nearly 11 million shares traded as the price rose from 1.8c to 4.9c, then finishing the day at 4c.
There was no apparent reason for the jump, its chief executive Crimmins advised.
But there were whispers Crimmins was possibly just adding to his family stake that already sat at above 20 per cent, on its busiest trading day ever.
The company had recently ventured into salt lotion for the Chinese market, and also the product of the times — hand sanitiser.
But the initial focus of the Chatswood and Cobbitty-based company was using cutting-edge science to breed novel vegetable varieties for sale to the horticulture industry.
Only recently Pitt Street Research life sciences sector analyst Stuart Roberts maintained there was still potential to extract value from its seeds division, with growers trialling tomato seeds, eggplant, zucchini and capsicum in the product pipeline.
But Crimmins’ pitch to shareholders as to why they should delist was that their 1.7c mid-May price was materially lower than underlying value. He believed the liquidity of the shares was insufficient to provide shareholders an avenue to sell their shares.
Shareholders were also told delisting would save the company $53,000 in ASX listing fees and compliance and registry costs.
The shareholders voted 78 per cent in favour for the company to be delisted.
Its final market capitalisation was $1.44m.
After developing its technology with the University of Sydney’s plant-breeding institute, Abundant’s so-called magic beans soared on its 2016 debut to 55c — more than double their 20c issue price — in the oversubscribed $3.5m IPO that saw it list with a market capitalisation of $9.3m.
Crimmins’ optimistic last annual report opened noting that there had been “explosive growth” in domestic sales of cucumbers.
However, Margin Call subscribes to the essayist Samuel Johnson’s view: “A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.”
Google review stew
Google must hand over details of an online reviewer’s identity to Melbourne lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson.
She is then likely to pursue defamation claims against the reviewer, or potentially, if it turns out to be a rival law firm, she might pursue a deceptive and misleading conduct claim.
Giving Google 21 days, Federal Court Justice Bernard Murphy granted the discovery orders sought regarding the negative review that was posted in February.
It’s alleged Google facilitated someone calling himself Mohamed Ahmed, who purported to be a former client of Garde-Wilson’s firm in making the posting. “Hiring Zara (sic) was the most expensive and worst decision I have ever made,” it said in part.
The review of Garde-Wilson, whose late de facto husband, underworld figure Lewis Caine, was murdered in the Melbourne gangland wars, has since been removed.
There is a defamation precedent emerging as an Adelaide lawyer, who lost 80 per cent of his clients following a one-star rating from someone who was never a client, was awarded a $750,000 defamation payout against the woman earlier this year.
Garde-Wilson is being represented in the Google disclosure matter by Mark Stanarevic of Matrix Legal.
“The only thing Google will listen to is a court order,” he maintains.
Stanarevic secured a Federal Court judgment earlier this year ordering Google to hand over the details of an incognito reviewer who criticised a Melbourne dentist.
And Stanarevic is also acting for brothel The Boardroom of Melbourne in another discovery lawsuit against Google for a negative online review, also before Justice Murphy.
Twiggy’s media man
Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest is bolstering his private media team.
He’s poached Vodafone’s general manager of external affairs Anthony Flannery, the former longtime television media operative.
Flannery will be taking the role of external affairs director at Tattarang, the Forrest family’s private commercial group, which announced last month it had changed its brand name from Minderoo to Tattarang.
Tattarang invests in a diverse range of sectors, including resources, agrifood, energy, property, hospitality, sports and entertainment. It is Tattarang that holds a 36 per cent shareholding in the Fortescue Metals publicly listed company Forrest founded in 2003.
The Tattarang group is separate from Minderoo Foundation, the philanthropic entity founded by Forrest and wife Nicola, although Flannery will work across both.
Vodafone secured Flannery’s services some six years ago just after the Hutchison Australia entity became known as “Vodafail”.
He had joined the telco giant as head of corporate media relations in a break from the programming world, having been with Network Ten as its head of news and current affairs for the preceding two years.
After being educated at Parkes High, and Bathurst’s Mitchell College of Advanced Education, Flannery started his career in media in 1990 at the regional WIN TV, then NTD8 Darwin.
Joining the Nine Network in 1995, he moved through the shows, including Today over his 12 years, leaving Willoughby in 2007 to head across the ditch to TVNZ in Auckland.
His next desk will be in Perth.
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