Fernando MonteiroExuberance and Equanimity
July 3rd 2009 11:29
The news have been that Tom Hedley, the proprietor of Hedley Leisure and Gamming Property Fund, both pub operators and at their pinnacle in 2007 worth $715million, will see his empire crumble and will be left with only two pubs. Hedley made a story of rags to riches, but unfortunately will have go back to rags.
The reason for this fall was that Hedley bought the pubs at full price at the top of the market and borrowed too much in margin loans with Suncorp and ANZ bank when credit was easy, being that now he cannot pay his margin calls.
But what brought me to write this post was that, at the top of his career, with business worth, as already mentioned, $715 million, Hedley lived in a modest house in a Cairns suburb. You could imagine the entrepreneur going about his substantial business by day and then coming back to his modest home by night. About this one it can be said that, disregarding his failure in business, money did not corrupt him. As it appears, he is content.
Contrast this with Eddy Groves, the founder of ABC Learning Centres, a business that imploded last year. His business failure was also mostly too much gearing and perhaps also too much greed. His lifestyle, though, at the top of his career was astonishing: he drove a Ferrari, wore crocodile boots, owned an array of apartments and houses worth many millions of dollars, flew a 16 seat private jet, piloted a helicopter and captained a yacht docked in the Versace marina in the Gold Cost. A true banana life, I would say.
When threatened with liquidation, Groves responded by contracting a marketing agency to promote his image, this to me meaning that this guy is purely a hot air balloon. Problem is, he is going to have a really hard time trying to adapt to a rags type of living, since as I believe, ABC’s liquidators won’t let him keep anything. He may even end up having to work, who knows. Ouch.
The reason for this fall was that Hedley bought the pubs at full price at the top of the market and borrowed too much in margin loans with Suncorp and ANZ bank when credit was easy, being that now he cannot pay his margin calls.
But what brought me to write this post was that, at the top of his career, with business worth, as already mentioned, $715 million, Hedley lived in a modest house in a Cairns suburb. You could imagine the entrepreneur going about his substantial business by day and then coming back to his modest home by night. About this one it can be said that, disregarding his failure in business, money did not corrupt him. As it appears, he is content.
Contrast this with Eddy Groves, the founder of ABC Learning Centres, a business that imploded last year. His business failure was also mostly too much gearing and perhaps also too much greed. His lifestyle, though, at the top of his career was astonishing: he drove a Ferrari, wore crocodile boots, owned an array of apartments and houses worth many millions of dollars, flew a 16 seat private jet, piloted a helicopter and captained a yacht docked in the Versace marina in the Gold Cost. A true banana life, I would say.
When threatened with liquidation, Groves responded by contracting a marketing agency to promote his image, this to me meaning that this guy is purely a hot air balloon. Problem is, he is going to have a really hard time trying to adapt to a rags type of living, since as I believe, ABC’s liquidators won’t let him keep anything. He may even end up having to work, who knows. Ouch.
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