‘Mr Bras’ Brett Blundy has things to sell

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Billionaires have problems, too. Just ask retailer Brett Blundy, who is still struggling to offload his luxe portfolio of Australian bricks, mortar and pasture.

Blundy is now based in Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s city state of Singapore — where the tax rate is a tidy 17 per cent, even without a double Irish with a Dutch sandwich.

And it seems Mr Bras N Things has deemed his property Down Under superfluous.

If only he could sell the things.

Brett Blundy

To try and clear the decks, Blundy is having a fresh crack at offloading his harbourfront mansion in Sydney’s Rose Bay that was marketed early this year for $45 million. Expressions of interest for the pile close on September 29.

This follows Blundy last month relisting his house on the Hawkesbury — for a third time.

A fresh agent has been given the gig of flogging the property in Cattai, on the pastoral northwest fringe of Sydney. The place cost $8m to build and was first listed, in 2013, for $20m.

Blundy is believed to have knocked back $14m before listing the semi-rural retreat in March last year.

Blundy’s Cattai “ranch”.

All up, it’s proving far trickier than the billionaire’s listing, and then selling down, of various low-end retail businesses on Rick Holliday-Smith’s Australian stock exchange.

And much harder than commissioning a new super yacht to join his 200-foot-long Cloud 9.

We hear, despite the property sale delays, construction continues on the enormous, new boat in Italy. Expect a beauty when it finally emerges.

Dance macabre

For another year, the Sydney Dance Company’s annual Dance Noir party was the harbinger of regime change.

Architect Randal Marsh, Deborah Thomas and Malcolm Turnbull at the Sydney Dance Company's annual Dance Noir party in 2015 - just before the leadership coup.

Last year, a grinning Malcolm Turnbull arrived at the Walsh Bay Pier 2 venue by water taxi. Turnbull was resplendent in a white jacket. His Point Piper neighbour and Ardent Leisure chief executive Deborah Thomas was his date, as Lucy Turnbull nursed a cold athome.

Also at last year’s “Latin Fever”-themed party was Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and her chiselled partner David Panton.

Less than 48 hours after the gathering, Tony Abbott’s prime ministership was crumbling.

So it was with some trepidation that partygoers gathered this Saturday night past. The Dance Noir party’s theme was “Wild”.

Former Sotheby’s Australia chair Justin Miller, on auction duties, promised that this year there would be no subsequent coups.

Recent birthday girl and billionaire Gretel Packer was along (and bidded generously), former Nine chairman David Haslingden (and current Ardent Leisure director) auctioned off a holiday at his holiday place in Mexico and arts patron Judith Neilson chipped away at her fortune of $1.45 billion as she bought half the auctioned items.

The Prime Minister, on a colourful shirt-modelling assignment in Micronesia, sent his apologies, but wife Lucy was along with Thomas and her Ardent chair Neil Balnaves, a major patron of the dance company.

Sure enough, less than 48 hours after the gathering, Balnaves told the market his chairmanship of the entertainment group will end on November 6, a week after Ardent’s October 27 AGM.

George Venardos — an Ardent director since 2009 — will take over as chair. A much more orderly development than 2015’s post-party revolution, but regime change nonetheless.

Keneally’s gig

Kristina Keneally is the latest former Labor premier to join the national foreign policy think tank scene.

The American-raised Keneally, a Sky News presenter, has joined the board of the United States Studies Centre, which is based at chancellor Belinda Hutchinson’s University of Sydney.

On the board, Keneally joins former Labor premier in Victoria John Brumby, who — for balance — is also a director of the Australian wing of controversial Chinese telco Huawei.

Lucy Turnbull at the American Australian Association and US Studies Centre dinner. (Jane Dempster/The Australian)

he US Studies Centre’s Liberal credentials are covered by its patron, Lucy Turnbull. As it happens, her son-in-law James Brown, the former Australian Army officer, is employed by the centre as a research director.

Former foreign minister Bob Carr’s Australia-China Relations Institute — which resides at chancellor and FIRB chair Brian Wilson’s University of Technology — was founded in 2014 by a grant of $1.8m by billionaire Xiangmo Huang, a Chinese citizen.

As revealed here last week, Liberal grandee Philip Ruddock will chair the ACRI’s advisory board — as long as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop gives the appointment the tick.

Aitken’s advisory

Sacked broker Angus Aitken has added a third business interest to his life after Colin Bell’s Bell Potter.

Aitken — just back from a basket-weaving retreat in Fiji — is going into the advisory business with his good friend John “Blue Hands” Murray. It will be called Aitken Murray Capital Partners and is scheduled to be open in October.

Their “unique ‘boutique’ proposition” (their words) is in addition to another subscription news and commentary business called Market Animal, which is now expected to launch at the start of next year.

Former Google Australia boss and now group executive digital banking at ANZ Maile Carnegie.

Aitken will be best known to many readers for his third business venture: suing Shayne Elliott’s ANZ over the bloody fallout from a note Aitken wrote and a subsequent tweet by ANZ over the hiring of the bank’s new chief financial officer, Michelle Jablko.

That case returns to the NSW Supreme Court for a directions hearing on Friday, with the hearing set for August next year.

As it happens, Elliott’s other star executive female hire this year is Maile Carnegie, the bank’s new digital boss. She’s also the sister-in-law of venture capitalist Mark Carnegie, who will be Aitken and Murray’s new landlord at their new office in Sydney’s Paddington.

Westin’s court

The Westin hotel in Sydney’s Martin Place is a favoured spot of the local business crowd.

Outgoing Business Council of Australia president Catherine Livingstone (whose now Brian Loughnane-advised board meet in Sydney later in the week to discuss, once again, her replacement ahead of their November AGM) is known to work in the lounge. Chair of Woolworths and Origin Gordon Cairns is a regular in the coffee shop.

This week, a different crowd has taken over. Tennis great Lleyton Hewitt’s Davis Cup team checked in yesterday.

Among the entourage are the two current bad boys of Australian tennis: Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios, who seemed to have almost as much trouble checking into his room yesterday as he has had getting match fit for this week’s playoff against Slovakia. Play well, guys.

And, Westin regulars, take care.