James Packer takes a bigger stake on ex-wife’s Upside empire

Jodhi Meares poses outside a The Upside outlet in Mosman.

Just-turned-50 gaming mogul James Packer has doubled his stake in former wife and glamour model Jodhi Meares’ The Upside Corporation.

The pair are now the only two investors in the fashion enterprise, with Packer increasing his stake, held via his Chermon Pty Ltd, from 20 to 40 per cent, while Meares’ stake is steady at 60 per cent held via her Kashmeares Pty Ltd.

Packer has taken over the 20 per cent holding of his Israeli billionaire businessman and movie producer friend Arnon Milchan, who initially invested in The Upside alongside Packer in October last year.

It is unclear how much Packer has paid the Hollywood movie man for the buyout.

The deal is the next step in Packer’s extraction from his former life in Israel amid a corruption investigation into his good friend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his family. The Aussie billionaire and Milchan have both been drawn into the probe.

It was Milchan who is believed to have first introduced Netanyahu to Packer.

Packer, who this weekend is celebrating his milestone birthday with friends and family at his Ellerstina polo property in Argentina, has now changed his official residence from Tel Aviv to Aspen, Colorado.

In line with Milchan’s sellout of the burgeoning fashion business after less than a year, the New Regency producer’s Los Angeles-based son Yariv Milchan has also come off The Upside Corp board, replaced by Packer’s lieutenant Mark Arbib.

Look out for the former Labor numbers man and trade unionist, who is no stranger to Lycra as president of Athletics Australia and on the executive of the Australian Olympic Committee, promenading on Coogee beach in his Upside sporty-luxe kit.

The managing director of brands at Packer’s Consolidated Press, Sam McKay, is already on The Upside board, with Arbib’s appointment doubling Packer’s representation. ConsPress lawyer Louise Lane was also installed at the end of last year as the Darlinghurst-based business’s company secretary, a role previously fulfilled by Meares.

The changes come as former bikini model Meares settles into her new weatherboard cottage in Watsons Bay, which she bought for $2.75 million in June in favour of her former Sydney bolthole on Wolseley Road, in Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Point Piper.

Earlier this year, Meares split from her second husband, Melbourne photographer Nicholas Tsindos, 30, who she married at the end of 2015 after a whirlwind courtship.

Packer and Meares were married for three years before they divorced in 2002. He then married model Erica Baxter, 40, and had three children, before they split in 2013.