Jon Adgemis misses $600,000 payment, gets one-month extension in protracted rescue

Employees of Jon Adgemis’s pubs group will wait another month for payment after he was granted an extension on a $600,000 instalment to April 30.

Ex-dealmaker Jon Adgemis is trying to get a rescue over the line. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

Sydney pub baron Jon Adgemis has failed to meet a deadline to make a $600,000 contribution to his former employees, and has been given a month-long extension to deliver the second instalment as part of an agreed financial rescue.

Mr Adgemis, who headed up the former Public Hospitality Group, which oversaw 22 venues at its peak, was due to pay administrators the second tranche of three payments due to former staff under a deal cut in January.

But administrator BDO revealed on Friday that Mr Adgemis failed to make the payment, scheduled under a Deed of Company Arrangement, after handing over $400,000 in February.

Mr Adgemis struck a $7.7m peace deal with creditors. This would be funded by an upfront $1m in cash to cover staff wages, with the prospect of a $6.7m contribution down the track funded by lender ­Archibald Capital, due by September.

The cash from Archibald Capital, led by Sydney financier Ben Madsen, is expected to come from the refinancing of pubs and hotels owned by Mr Adgemis’s Public Hospitality Group currently under construction or renovation.

Mr Adgemis’s companies had to meet a $600,000 instalment by March 31.

However, sources close to Mr Adgemis say he sought and was granted a one-month deferral ahead of the March 31 deadline.

BDO granted the extension to April 30.

Former staff of Mr Adgemis’s pub group are owed an estimated $3.6m, according to the administrator’s documents. This is on top of $128m owed to secured creditors, plus a further $86m owed to unsecured creditors.

The fracas comes after lender Muzinich tipped chunks of Mr Adgemis’s former pub empire into receivership in September.

The New York-based non-bank lender snapped up a $100m line of credit over five Sydney ­venues in Mr Adgemis’s empire, including The Strand Hotel in Darlinghurst, Camelia Grove Hotel in Alexandria, Norfolk Hotel in Redfern, Oxford House in Darlinghurst, and a site under development, the Exchange Hotel in Balmain.

Mr Adgemis has since offloaded the running of the remainder of his pubs empire to hospitality operator Linchpin Group, run by veteran hospitality figure Terry Soukoulis. Linchpin is now operating those venues within the pub group.

Creditors are still separately pursuing Mr Adgemis for money owed, with at least four cases in the NSW Supreme Court.

Mr Adgemis is working closely on completion of several big builds, including a 19-room boutique hotel the Flinders in Sydney’s Darlinghurst, as well as the Exchange in Balmain and the Bondi backpackers formerly known as Noah’s.

Mr Soukoulis said in February that it was “categorically not the case” that Linchpin was a reincarnation or extension of Public Hospitality Group.

Linchpin is backed by distressed investment adviser Damien Hodkinson and Public Hospitality Group’s former head of operations Joanne Sproule alongside Monaco-based family office Amina Capital, represented by Marco Vettelli.

Mr Soukoulis said at the time the group, which boasts almost 130 staff, is well positioned to plug in and take control of the pubs, and the company would operate the ­venues and only deal with the former KPMG dealmaker in a tenant-landlord relationship. Revenue across the business is understood to be substantial.