Sam Tarascio produces the good olive oil

Cartoon: Rod Clement

If you asked billionaire property developer Sam Tarascio senior for his greatest business passion outside of Salta Properties, now run by his son Sam junior, it would be his 2500-strong olive grove plantation on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

The family hail from olive oil processors in the Sicilian town of Vizzini in the 1930s.

Now Tarascio’s Point Leo Taralinga Estate oil has become an enduring labour of love.

“It is not about making money really, it is about producing the very best,” the family patriarch said in a rare interview in The Australian’s Rich 250 2020 edition.

Taralinga superseded last year’s performance at the eighth New York International Olive Oil Competition by taking home two gold awards earlier this month.

There were 900 olive oils from 26 countries, with no Australians on the remote judging panel.

Last year the brand won gold and silver medals in what is one of the most prestigious olive oil competitions in the world. The win places Taralinga Estate on the Official Index of the World’s Best Olive Oils.

Australia’s largest producer of extra virgin olive oil, Cobram Estate, took home three gold and seven silver medals. And Cape Schanck Olive Estate also secured gold for the Tham family.

NBA’s full court press

Notwithstanding this week’s confirmed collapse of the Illawarra Hawks, NBL owner Larry Kestelman hopes a new COVID-19 taskforce will guide basketball’s return across Australia close to its scheduled start.

The NBL season is set to begin in October, but without any television deal needs to await permission for live crowds.

The millionaire Basketball Australia chair Ned Coten heads an 11-strong committee that ­includes billionaire Ruffy ­Geminder, Wesfarmers board member Diane Smith-Gander, and private equity executive Rickard Gardell, who all have a history with the game.

Already, player salaries have been cut by up to 50 per cent and there’s the likelihood imports, which have been reduced to two per team, will be hesitant to turn up even if they are allowed to fly into the country.

Meanwhile, there’s heightened expectations that Australia’s star Boomer Andrew Bogut will shortly reveal his decision on retirement or playing on with the Sydney Kings and then perhaps the Olympic Games next year.

“It’s a coin flip,” Bogut has previously said.

“Everything is up in the air,” he told Margin Call on Tuesday, interrupting meetings with his inner circle to review his own playing situation, the league and the ongoing COVID-19 impact.

Bogut, who turns 36 in November, played a big part in the improved fortunes of the Kings despite his back issues, especially in the first two matches of the abandoned grand final series when the Kings were eyeing their first NBL championship since 2005.

When the 7-foot (213cm) centre signed on for Sydney, part of the deal was he would take a 10 per cent stake in the club once he retired.

Kings owner Paul Smith, who is the founder of Total Sports + Entertainment, has previously indicated he will be happy either way.

Bogut splits his time between his hometown Melbourne, a cottage near Sydney’s Homebush, along with a recently acquired $4m retreat in southeast Queensland.

Bogut has always been a real estate enthusiast, which saw him take an early stake in Listing Loop, a newly launched property listing platform.

The website, led by the entrepreneur Rhett Dallwitz, offers off-market listings. Dubbed the home of off-market properties, ListingLoop.com.au has recently reported a 58 per cent spike in listings despite the drop in COVID-19-affected industry-wide listings. It has also seen a 23 per cent jump in buyer registrations.

Change of address

How do you organise an office move affecting 3000-odd employees when virtually no one is actually working in the office?

That’s been the logistic dilemma facing the great minds at accounting giant Deloitte, whose long-term lease on Melbourne’s Bourke Street has just expired ahead of a long-planned shift to Mirvac’s 40-storey Olderfleet building at 477 Collins Street.

The weekend saw Deloitte officially “move” premises, despite the fact that pretty much none of its staff will set foot in the new digs for some time.

Thanks to COVID-19, more than 95 per cent of Deloitte’s Richard Deutsche-led staff are working from home.

That includes restructuring services lead partner Salvatore Algeri, who is leading the Melbourne contingent working on the Virgin Australia administration, all of whom have been providing documents for the virtual dataroom, liaising with and vetting potential bidders over the past four weeks from their kitchen tables and home offices.

On Monday, just as four short-listed Virgin bidders were published, Algeri, who is one of four named corporate undertakers working with Deloitte’s frontman Vaughan Strawbridge, officially updated the Virgin Australia process that he had changed corporate address.

Except all that had really changed was that a cardboard box bearing Algeri’s name holding a few office bits and pieces landed at the new Collins Street address, between Williams and King.

Meanwhile, fellow partner Strawbridge is based out of the firm’s Sydney office at Grosvenor Place on George Street, which happens to be where Virgin’s Velocity Frequent Flyer program, which as a stand-alone entity is not in administration, is also headquartered.

Deloitte subleases floor space there to the Virgin offshoot.

G-Star on the wane

The Amsterdam-headquartered but Alexandria-based ragtrader G-Star Raw’s possible exit from an Australian bricks-and-mortar presence was in the works for around a month before it went into voluntary administration last Friday.

The denim giant had initial discussions with EY Australia on April 22, introduced to G-Star from the EY Netherlands office.

EY Australian liquidator Justin Walsh held telephone meetings the G-Star Raw chief financial officer Rob Cox and their long-time general counsel Christian de Bil familiarising them with the administration procedures that applied to Australia.

Overwhelmed by the challenges faced by the COVID-19 shutdown, the final calls were with the company’s board, including Cox, chief executive Rob Schilder and Jeffrey Duyvesteijn, the general manager of Australia and New Zealand.

With 57 shops, G-Star employ about 200 staff, having opened the first flagship store in 2003 at Melbourne Central.

Models Sarah Ellen and Louise Van de Vorst have both collaborated with G-Star after Nick and Candice Hirons brought the denim brand down under during its prior ownership structure.

Its most recent financial records, for the year to April 2018, showed gross sales up from $23m to $39m, but costs had jumped, meaning the net profit fell from $1.5m to $400,000.

Shorten’s new union

Better late than never. Seven months after buying and four months after settling on his family’s $3m dream home, former opposition leader Bill Shorten has updated the federal parliament on his luxury buy.

We already knew that the now shadow NDIS minister and enduring Member for Maribyrnong and wife Chloe Shorten committed to buy in the inner Melbourne electorate’s Travancore last October, settling on the purchase of the five-bedroom home with a pool in January.

But now we see that the Shortens, who sold their nearby Moonee Ponds home in December for $1.67m, have ditched ANZ for their home loan. The Shortens have instead gone with Members Equity Bank, which is 100 per cent-owned by 26 industry super funds.

It’s a nice fit for the former Australian Workers Union organiser who rose to become national secretary before launching his political career.

ME Bank is a fit for Chloe, who is a non-executive director of the industry super fund-owned Industry Fund Services.

All in the union family.