Word: australia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...high school dropout who emigrated from England as a boy, Bond had come up the hard way, fueled by an insatiable drive to acquire, combine, take over. At 49 he was one of the richest men in Australia. He controlled an empire of assets under the umbrella of his holding company, Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd.: television stations, retailing, minerals and breweries around the world. He had even figured out a way of selling nonalcoholic beer to Muslims in the Middle East. Everything about him was on a large scale -- his ambitions, his capacity for risk, his appetite for publicity. Also...
...market was running quite high between the crash and the sale of Irises, but the painting was greeted as a talisman. Bond beefed up the security arrangements on the top floor of his headquarters in Perth to fortress strength and unveiled his acquisition -- the only Van Gogh in Australia -- to the press. "This isn't just a great painting!" he exulted to the cameras. "It's the greatest painting in the world...
...through 1988 and 1989, Bond's own finances were not. His bid for Irises had been part of a consistent pattern: paying far too much for investments even though they were, as assets, sound. In 1987 he paid more than $700 million for Kerry Packer's TV stations in Australia. In the financial year ending last June, Bond's media firm posted a $34 million loss. Also in 1987, Bond paid more than $1 billion for the U.S. brewery G. Heileman, whose 1989 resale value is about half that...
Early in 1989 Bond arranged to send the Van Gogh and five minor impressionist paintings he owned, packaged as "Irises and Five Masterpieces," on a tour of Australian museums, finishing at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Irises was set in a double-glazed frame that ensured no one could touch or even closely inspect its surface -- which made some skeptical Aussies suspect it was an exact copy commissioned, for security reasons, by Sotheby...
Banking sources in Australia say Bond only regained title to this Manet in the nick of time. He had bought it at Christie's in 1983 for $3.96 million and transferred ownership to the Sydney branch of Chemical Bank. Chemical then leased it back to Bond. Why this maneuver? Because, says a bank source who analyzed the lease after it was issued, Bond had found a tax loophole. Under Australian tax law, you could lease any asset -- say, a tractor -- from its owner and get a tax deduction for all payments of principal and interest, as long...