Lady Mary ensures the Fairfax name lives on

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

• Fairfax bows out with a loss

The late Lady Mary Fairfax’s $100 million-plus Sydney Harbour trophy home Fairwater could be in the famous family’s possession for decades to come, according to never before published provisions in her will.

And while the Fairfax family name looks set to slip from the boards of the stock exchange following a $4 billion merger with Hugh Marks’s Nine Entertainment, the wishes of Lady Mary will ensure some ongoing prominence for the family name thanks to a $600m-plus vehicle, the Lady (Mary) Fairfax Trust.

Margin Call has obtained the 35-page last will and testament of Lady Mary, who died aged 95 last September.

It outlines the until now private inheritance plans for one of the Australia’s richest families and will be of particular interest to eastern suburbs property aficionados.

The vast fortune has been left entirely to her four children.

The four beneficiaries are the US-based Warwick Fairfax Junior (aka Young Warwick of the infamous 1987 failed Fairfax takeover attempt), adopted children Charles Fairfax and Anna Cleary, as well as lawyer Garth Symonds, Lady Mary’s son from a previous marriage.

Sir Warwick’s three children from his previous marriages, James Fairfax, Caroline Simpson and Annalise Thomas, were explicitly not provided for in Lady Mary’s will, which was penned by the matriarch on July 16, 1999, and in the will are dubbed “The Excluded Class”.

Margin Call understands Lady Mary considered those children, as well as Sir Warwick’s stepson Alan Anderson from a previous marriage and Sir Warwick’s late brother Vincent Fairfax and his descendants (all fellow members of “The Excluded Class”), had been adequately provided for following her husband’s death in 1987.

Her will, which was modified twice — once at the end of the year it was created and then again in April 2003 — was granted probate in the NSW Supreme Court on January 3 this year.

It has not been contested — yet.

  

Fairwater friends

So what of the famous house, the property considered the most likely to be the first in Australia to trade above $100m?

There is no explicit mention of how Fairwater is to be bequeathed in the will, although the trustees have the “power of sale” of all assets in the trust fund.

That means the 8000sq m Point Piper residence is in the hands of the four executors — who are now the individual trustees of the new Lady Fairfax Trust — who were selected by Lady Mary.

Three executors were selected for their expertise in commerce, the law and finance — Lady Mary’s long-term adviser and confidante Bruce Solomon, 65, former top tier lawyer and barrister Jim Momsen, 76, and former KPMG partner Peter Done, 70.

The fourth executor is Lady Mary’s longstanding personal assistant Lee Thomas, 67.

Fairwater’s title to the home on New South Head Road was transferred to the will’s executors on February 20.

Interestingly, the will does outline that “live-in” staff members employed by Lady Mary at the time of her death can “continue to live-in at Fairwater”.

Fairwater in Point Piper. Picture: James Croucher

Lady Mary’s trusted personal assistant and executor Thomas is one such person.

On Margin Call’s reading, even if the four siblings do agree that they want to sell the property, with Thomas in residence, it doesn’t look like the New South Head Road trophy home is going to hit the market any time soon.

The quartet of executors are being advised by Clayton Utz partner Stuart Clark, who is also president of the Law Council of Australia, with the law firm also long-term advisers to Lady Mary concerning her affairs.

The executors of the estate, as well as Clark, all declined to comment.

PA’s pot of gold

Lee Thomas has also long been involved with the trust’s other key asset, Lady Mary’s investment vehicle Alsim Pty Ltd.

Thomas — who the will stipulates will receive her indexed salary for the rest of her life — has been a director of Alsim since 1991.

At last public count, Alsim held cash of almost $150m and net assets of $234m.

Corporate records for Alsim reveal the investment company, which has significant land holdings and hospitality assets, made a net profit of $37m in the 2017 financial year, compared with $47m previously.

In the two years before Lady Mary passed away, she extracted $15.5m from the group as dividends.

The party goes on

As well as looking after her children, Lady Mary has
well provided for her
favourite charities and arts institutions.

In late 1999, Lady Mary added to her will the Opera Foundation Australia, which she founded and which is now run by her daughter Anna, and Sydney’s Cochlear Implant Centre.

The rest of the 21st century looks well funded for them. The trust will control Lady Mary’s assets, and provide income for them and her four children, until 79 years after her death — that is, until 2096. Few of us will be around by then.

And it looks likes good news for the Irish diaspora and eastern suburbs hangers who have gathered for 30 years every spring at Fairwater for the Australian Ireland Fund’s garden party.

The philanthropic event was a fixture on the city’s social calendar, filled to the brim with Fairfax offspring including Anna Cleary and her husband David, along with The Star chair John O’Neill and Qantas boss Alan Joyce, even if in recent years it became too difficult for the ever supportive Lady Mary, in her 90s, to make even a brief appearance.

Margin Call can reveal the charity event should go on for some time yet thanks to Lady Mary’s explicit instructions.

John O'Neill and Lee Thomas at the Fairwater garden party

“The trustees shall have … the power to allow Fairwater … to be used by charitable organisations and fundraising in the same manner as Fairwater has been used during my lifetime and such charitable organisations are not confined to charitable organisations that I have permitted to use Fairwater during my lifetime,” Lady Mary’s last will and testament sets out.

That should allow charities such as The Irish Fund to continue to use the estate for their fundraising.

Let the Guinness flow.