Billionaire James Packer might not much like coming back to the goldfish bowl that he sees as Australia, but he sure has taken a fancy to sinking millions into what has become an array of property developments down under.
This time the businessman’s latest foray into residential real estate is in Melbourne’s Toorak, where he has just signed on to back a $400m new project by local developer Orchard Piper.
Margin Call has learned that Packer and his former executive at Crown Resorts Todd Nisbet have joined with Orchard Piper principals Luke McKie and Rick Gronow in a 50-50 partnership to build a mix-use, eight-storey development on Toorak’s Carters Ave.
Orchard Piper paid $67m for what is one of the last development sites in the affluent suburb.
The block is home to a Mercedes Benz dealership, with the firm last year lodging plans for a 46-apartment building, including basement parking, as well as office and retail tenancies. The local council is yet to approve the proposal.
Packer’s entry to the deal was believed to have been finalised last week.
Dire straights
Look how desperate embattled financial services consultancy PwC Australia has become in trying to communicate its position on the still unfolding tax scandal to anyone who’ll listen in the federal parliament.
A scan of the Lobbyist Register reveals that the Kevin Burrowes-led firm, which is still enmeshed in the fallout from the misconduct that has publicly gripped the Australian arm of the partnership since January last year, has hired Brookline Advisory lobbyists Lidija Ivanovski and Gerard Richardson to get its messages heard in Canberra.
Ivanovski is a former chief of staff to Labor deputy leader Richard Marles, while Richardson is a former communications director to Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
Brookline on Tuesday was signed on to work for PwC, which has carved off its government consultancy business (now Scyne Advisory) to private equity in the wake of the tax scandal.
A spokesman for PwC declined to comment on the appointment.
It’s been a big week for the fledgling lobbying firm, which was formed only last year.
It has been revealed also to be working for US-based company PsiQuantum, which has just landed almost $1bn in taxpayer funds to build what would be a world-first quantum computer in Brisbane.
Busy bee
But back to Packer, who it seems has had a busy time of things in recent weeks when it comes to bricks and mortar.
Packer and Nisbet have also been active, Margin Call understands, in the vicinity of Rushcutters Bay in Sydney’s inner east.
Details remain sketchy, but talk is that Packer has entered a deal for a major development in the affluent harbourside suburb, home to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia and the widely popular adjacent Rushcutters Bay Park.
Several large-scale developments are on the boil in the sought-after locale, including Nautique on Bayswater Road being rolled out by Jean-Dominique Huynh’s JDH Capital, and most recently a project just lodged with the City of Sydney by developer Thirdi for a
12-apartment complex, which is yet to receive planning approval.
Packer, via his adviser on the ground in Sydney Lawrence Myers, at the end of last week created a new company NPACT Rushcutters, which is believed to be linked to the billionaire’s plans.
He already has interests in property development projects in Manly, Potts Point, Melbourne’s CBD via the Hotel Lindrum on Flinders Street, as well as suburbs including Balwyn and Clayton.
Project stymied
Developers associated with Packer’s latest multimillion-dollar Australian property plays will be hoping for a smoother pathway than one of the first revealed by Margin Call after the billionaire’s bittersweet cash-out of Crown Resorts to the tune of $3.3bn in mid-2022.
Just a few months later, the 56-year-old had signed up to be part of a consortium planning to develop 108 (relatively affordable) new dwellings in Corio, a less than fashionable suburb of satellite city Geelong.
Application for planning approval for the $100m-plus project was first lodged with Greater Geelong local council in November 2022. Plenty of unfulfilling dialogue with authorities since then saw Packer’s mob, ambitiously known as Edenville Corio, escalate the matter to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal, with the matter heard in mid-February. Tick tock; more than a year and a half since the process began and still no decision forthcoming.
What housing crisis?
More riches
What of the most recent wife of millionaire John Symond, who has just thrust his Point Piper home Wingadal onto the international real estate market for circa $200m, with the pile expected to break Aussie records?
Amber Symond, from whom the businessman separated at the end of last year, is rolling on with the $5m reno of her own historic mansion on Potts Points’ Challis Ave as divorce negotiations unfold.
The fashion designer, who was previously married to former prime minister Paul Keating’s son Patrick, bought the home, then a boutique hotel, in 2020 for $12.5m. Mid-last year Symond secured the planning tick from City of Sydney for her overhaul following a process that took all of 18 months. Neighbours hated what Symond had proposed, calling it “gross over development”. In November last year, just before announcement of the couple’s separation, she took out a mortgage on the home.
The Aussie Home Loans founder, who is estimated on this newspaper’s The List to be worth $721m, is still a director of his former wife’s high-end fashion label Common Hours.
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