The List: Justin Hemmes gains entry to billionaires’ club

Justin Hemmes is a billionaire for the first time thanks to the spectacular rise of his Sydney hotel and pub empire.

‘Blind faith can be a wonderful thing’: new billionaire Justin Hemmes once struggled to get banks to back his ventures. Picture: Nic Walker

Justin Hemmes is a billionaire for the first time thanks to the spectacular rise and rise of his Sydney hotel and pub empire Merivale.

Mr Hemmes owns Merivale with sister Bettina and has a fortune­ valued at $1.05 billion on the inaugural edition of The List — Australia’s Richest 250, published in a special magazine in The Weekend Australian on Saturday. He is also one of 68 property ident­ities who appear in The List, the biggest study of wealth in Australia ever undertaken.

He now oversees an empire comprising 89 properties and brands, more than 3000 full- and part-time ­employees, and a business with more than $400 million revenue annually.

But Mr Hemmes has not always­ had it easy, revealing that he struggled to convince banks to back his transformational Establishment entertainment mecca in the Sydney CBD in 2000, and then Ivy seven years later. “I couldn’t get the finance at first after doing all the rounds of the banks,’’ he told The Australian. “But I had faith that if you create something that people want, they will come.”

With Ivy, Mr Hemmes recalls using cashflow from other parts of his business to pay interest on a $22 million loan. “I remember saying to Dad (the late John Hemmes): ‘I think we will have to pull the plug.’ But he asked me if I thought it would be any good and I said: ‘Yeah, it is going to be amazing.’ ‘So you have to stick to it,’ he said. And I did.”

Mr Hemmes is now deep into the planning of his biggest project yet: a $1.5bn radical knockdown and complete rebuild of the Ivy precinct on George Street that will see him once again transform the city’s CBD.

“Maybe I’m more like an artist. I’ve always wanted to create something here; that has always been the plan. But with the opening­-up of George Street and the trams (soon) going through, the excitement and development that is happening in the city is unpreced­ented.”

Ivy will be rebuilt within seven years and, while he has not finalised the plans for the precinct that for now at least contains 20 different venues and businesses, he is close to formulating his vision.

“I basically want to reimagine how we work and play and socialise; and how we interact.’’

The radical Ivy revamp plan also comes at a time when Mr Hemmes, once known as Sydney­’s “ultimate playboy”, insists­ stories about his personal life — which included a high-profile­ split from the mother of his two young children, Kate Fowler, last year — have created a “stigma­” around his reputation.

He says he is now living a relatively quiet life and rides to work on an electric bike, though admits he still “loves to have fun”. “He drives himself very hard and expects­ the best, working collaboratively to deliver the vision,” says friend and Seven West Media executive Bruce McWilliam.

“His flair for finance is equally as impressive as each new outlet enhances the whole group.

“He always gives of himself, which is why he has such a big group of friends and supporters on top of family.”

But Mr Hemmes says his big project will not be as risky as Establish­ment and the original Ivy once were. “They were my two biggest, and thankfully they paid off. But blind faith can be a wonderful thing.’’