John Kinghorn resumes link with LJ Hooker

Kinghorn resumes Hooker link

Investors who took a bath on John Kinghorn’s RAMS will be happy to hear the deadset Sydney legend is back in the home loans business with IPO hopeful LJ Hooker.

Kinghorn reportedly got control of the LJ Hooker home loans business last year as part of a deal in which he sold his stake in the real estate agency.

But it’s just the latest in a decades-long association with the storied real estate agency, whose hopes to float on the ASX were this week dealt a blow by the flop of fellow agent McGrath.

Kinghorn was part of a syndicate with Hooker heir Janusz Hooker to buy the company from Suncorp in 2009.

Even then, it was familiar territory. Kinghorn’s epic 79-page list of directorships shows he was on the board of LJ Hooker Home Loans Limited — which has since been wound up — between 1984 and 1993.

Nine buys new block

New Nine boss Hugh Marks might not have signed the cheque to jet 60 Minutes golden girl Tara Brown to the Middle East to snatch back Sally Faulkner’s kids, but he has scrawled his moniker on a $5.025 million contract to buy the location for the 12th season of reality flagship The Block.

Ahead of the ratings flop that is the show’s cousin Reno Rumble (created by the same production team of Julian Cress and David Barber), Marks in February shook hands with rich lister property developer Harry Stamoulis to buy a former soap factory in inner Melbourne’s Port Melbourne.

The investment comes amid a downturn in revenue and increase in costs at the entertainment company, with Nine now also having to carry the multi-million-dollar investment on its balance sheet.

Subdivision approval was granted before Nine settled at the end of March. Under an agreement with the local council covering the Ingles Street property, Nine has agreed that it will be worth $21.1m and, based on this, it will hand council a further $1.8m for parks.

Production of the show will start soon, with episodes to air much later this year.

Rough Beirut waters

If only Marks could surf his worries away like old Nine boss David Gyngell and — it turns out — the father of kidnapped Melbourne toddlers Noah and Lahela al-Amine, Ali Elamine.

Elamine is shaking off the stress of legal negotiations with his jailed wife Faulkner with regular surf sessions in the 20C Mediterranean waters off Lebanon’s coast.

While his estranged wife, Brown and Brown’s three-man crew all languish in Beirut jails, entrepreneur Elamine has repeatedly taken to his stand-up paddleboard and surfboards to ease the tension of the unfolding international legal drama.

Elamine runs local surf shop Surf Lebanon. With Faulkner’s permission, he took the children from Australia on holiday but never returned, which led the distressed mother to team up with 60 Minutes for the botched child recovery effort.

Just weeks ago and ahead of her ill-fated rescue mission to Beirut, Faulkner, who is now trying to negotiate a settlement with Elamine that would see her released from jail, was publicly airing her grief.

While the truth is yet to emerge, clear is the bitterness of the dispute, with Faulkner variously describing her former partner as “ass”, a “narcissist” and a “sociopath”.

Todd’s revamp pays off

Why wouldn’t you toss $20m into ad guru Todd Sampson’s new IPO, Vamp?

It seems an excellent prospect, on track to rake in a whopping $310,000 in revenue a year, its cut of fees paid to Instagram “influencers” for plugging products on Instagram.

Why, that’s almost as much as the $323,000 a year CEO Ben McGrath is to trouser.

T-shirt Todd, already a Qantas and Fairfax director, is to get $80,000 a year for his non-executive services, which appear to include appearing in the prospectus to tell would-be investors that brands not “considering the power of influencers” are “crazy”.

Vamp’s financials cover not quite a year, including the six months to the end of 2015 in which it lost $200,000.

Fingers crossed Instagram and regulators don’t crack down on social media product placement, which could tank the show, and ignore rival Roxy Jacenko’s Ministry of Talent and her roster of Insta-stars.

Management includes former George Patts exec Amy Luca and “influencer director” Monique Llewellyn, who comes from loss-making fashion e-tailer The Iconic.

Andrew Pridham’s Moelis is running the float.

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