By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
It’s expensive work being a billionaire. You’re expected to sink cash on all manner of garish extravagances simply to make up appearances.
Take James Packer’s superyacht IJE, which set the big fella back about $200 million, around $50 million over budget. Named after the initials of Packer’s three children, the tub, which took four years to build, boasts a nightclub, beauty room, movie theatre and fireplace, among other one-percenter amenities.
How the other half lives. The floating office on IJE.
The rule of thumb with these monstrosities is the average annual cost of keeping them afloat is around 10 per cent of the original price. Which means Packer is shelling out $20 million a year just to belong to the super yacht class.
In 2021, it looked like it was all getting a bit too much, as Packer briefly put IJE up for sale. It was quickly withdrawn after he received just one paltry lowball offer.
Instead, Packer appears to have settled for going the landlord (or in this case, sealord) route and renting the thing out. For a cool $3 million a week, you can live like part of Packer’s entourage.
James Packer’s yacht is up for hire.Credit: John Shakespeare
And it really has been a glittering entourage that has boarded the IJE in recent summers, a testament to Packer’s inexplicable knack with wooing celebrity. Robert De Niro is a regular, while his Killers of the Flower Moon co-star Leonardo DiCaprio was spotted alongside former Spider-Man Tobey Maguire last year.
Closer to earth, IJE has played a bit part in the annals of Australian corporate history. In 2020, Packer beamed in from the yacht, then moored off the coast of Tahiti, to give evidence at former judge Patricia Bergin’s NSW casino probe.
The final report found Crown Resorts unfit to hold a casino licence in NSW, and in the aftermath of that, and a separate royal commission in Victoria, Packer sold his stake in the pleasure giant to private equity firm Blackstone, receiving a $3.2 billion payout.
Sticking with matters financial, Packer would only need to rent the IJE for about seven weeks of the year to cover the costs of upkeep, according to our back-of-the-envelope calculations. Which leaves plenty more time for schmoozing with the Hollywood elite.
VIDEO NASTIES
It’s been nearly a decade since Matt “Huddo” Hudson, a former associate director at commercial real estate giant Colliers, released a raunchy video documenting the shenanigans at his “dirty, flirty” 30th birthday party.
The video, featuring a sea of gyrating bodies, women in skimpy nurse outfits, and winking property bros, all soundtracked by DJ Snake’s sexually repellent club banger Lean On, was meant to be a bit of harmless fun. It hasn’t aged well.
In 2016, it did the media rounds after Colliers, and its chief financial officer Sean Unwin, were the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by former executive assistant Alexandra Marks.
Marks alleged her former boss tried to force her head down to his crotch area, and organised for her to have sex with someone. While Unwin, and the company, initially promised to vigorously defend the allegations, the parties reached a confidential settlement, with the CFO departing.
Hudson was never named or involved in the proceedings, but the video, in which Unwin briefly appears, was reported by our stablemates at the AFR as a snapshot into the culture at Colliers. And it certainly was not one the bosses were particularly happy about.
Hudson was soon out the door, and removed the video in negotiations related to his departure from the firm. But the whole thing is set to resurface in the District Court on Tuesday, with a case between Hudson and Colliers set for a four-day hearing.
Both parties declined to comment on the matters before the courts when contacted, but CBD understands it relates to offers made by Colliers to Hudson in exchange for him removing the video after his departure.
There’s a cautionary tale in all this. Be careful what you put on the internet. It might just end up in court.
TAYLOR MADE
Frankly, CBD is getting a little tired of the intellectually vacuous push to turn pop icon Taylor Swift into a subject worthy of serious academic critique.
It gave us no pleasure to break news that the University of Melbourne would be hosting a Swiftposium on the singer. But whether we like it or not, hordes of Swifties disagree. The conference has attracted a ridiculous 400 submissions from 20 countries across 60 academic disciplines.
The timing of the sellout event, which runs from Monday to Wednesday, couldn’t be better, with Swift due in the country this week for the Australian leg of her Eras tour, fresh from helping her hunky beau Travis Kelce and his Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl.
Among the papers that made the cut for presentation, there are a couple that caught our eye, like an effort by Steven Amarnick from New York University – where they teach a course on Taylor Swift – assessing the singer’s ability to emulate the famously prolific output of 19th-century novelist Anthony Trollope.
Or the paper by a team of Melbourne medical researchers on the psychological distress among Swift’s local fans in the weeks following the release of tickets for the upcoming Australian shows.
Make it stop.
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