Everything about Alan Bond Businessman totally explained
Alan Bond (born
22 April 1938) is an
Australian businessman famous for high-profile business ventures, including what was at the time the biggest corporate collapse in Australian history, and for which he was convicted of fraud and sent to jail. Bond was born in the
Hammersmith district of
London,
England, and emigrated to Australia with his parents and sister Geraldine in 1950. Beginning his career as a
signwriter he formed what was to be
Bond Corporation in 1959. He became a public hero in his adopted country after bankrolling challenges for the
yachting trophy the
America's Cup, which resulted in his selection as
Australian of the Year in 1978. He finally won the
trophy in 1983, which had been held by the
New York Yacht Club since 1851.
History
The
Perth-based Bond made his fortune initially in property development and at one time was one of Australia's most prominent businesspeople. In 1970 he acquired three America's Cup bid yachts from Sir
Frank Packer. He later extended his business interests into other fields including
brewing (he controlled Castlemaine
Tooheys and
G. Heileman Brewing Company in
La Crosse, Wisconsin),
gold mining and
television. Australia's first private university,
Bond University, bears his name.
He purchased
QTQ-9,
Brisbane and settled an outstanding
defamation dispute the station had with the
Queensland premier,
Joh Bjelke-Petersen by paying out
AUD$400,000. He said in a television interview several years later that he paid because "Sir Joh left no doubt that if we were going to continue to do business successfully in Queensland then he expected the matter to be resolved".
In
1987, Bond purchased
Vincent Van Gogh's renowned painting,
Irises, for $54 million — at the time a world record for a single painting. The purchase was however funded by a substantial loan from the auctioneer,
Sotheby's, which Bond subsequently refused to repay and the painting was re-sold to the
J. Paul Getty Museum in
Los Angeles in
1990.
Also in
1987, he was the developer of the Bond Center constructed in
Hong Kong. It is currently known as the
Lippo Centre, Hong Kong.
Purchasing the Nine Network
In 1987 he paid $1 billion for the Australia-wide
Nine television network from
Kerry Packer's
PBL. In a 2003 interview with Andrew Denton, Bond described the negotiations as follows:
"...when we first sat down, we said, 'We're either going to sell our stations to you for $400 million, or you're going to sell your stations to us.' And he said, 'Well, I don't really want to sell my stations.' And I said, 'Oh, is that right?' So, anyway, after much discussion, Kerry thumped the table and said, 'Listen, if you can pay me $1 billion, I'll sell them to you, otherwise bugger off...' then I rang the National Australia Bank. I said, 'Look, I'm in discussions here to buy these television stations. Kerry will sell to me, and what I want to do is put our stations together and then, with Sky Channel, I'm going to float it off as a separate entity and raise the capital to pay for it... [Packer] said $1 billion [washis asking price], but I think I'll get it for $800 million...' [Thebank manager] duly rang back and said yes. I said, 'Thank God. I'll go and have some further negotiations with Kerry,' which I did. And true to his word, he never budged one penny off it. So I settled the deal with $800 million and a $200 million note. So he put his own $200 million in. So I'd $1 billion. And we put our other two stations up as collateral, which were worth probably $400 million."
Bond later ended up selling the network back to PBL in 1990 for $250 million in the midst of his business empire collapsing. Packer was quoted as saying "You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime".
Bankruptcy
He later went to jail, serving three years, for perpetrating Australia's biggest corporate fraud, AUD 1.2 billion against
Bell Group.
In 1995 Bond and his family bought him out of
bankruptcy, using about $12 million they held in offshore trusts to reach an arrangement with creditors who were owed $1.8 billion, a payout of a little over half a cent on the dollar.
Bond today
Since 2004, interests related to the Bond family have held a large block of non-voting shares in
Madagascar Oil, a business he cofounded with
Sam Malin and Robert Nelson. Interests related to the Bond family also control
Global Diamond Resources plc (formerly Lesotho Diamond Corporation) which is developing the Kao diamond pipe in the Kingdom of
Lesotho.
Further Information
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