Dick Pratt: From rags to writs

Billionaire Richard Pratt will be remembered as an aggressive businessman who was prepared to break rules to build his Visy empire.   

Pratt died April 28, 2009 in Melbourne at the age of 74 after a long battle with prostate cancer.

Over the past four decades, Pratt built paper and packaging company Visy Group into one of Australia's largest companies, with more than 6,000 staff and annual revenues of more than $3 billion.

Pratt is survived by his wife Jeanne and four children: Anthony, Heloise, Fiona and Paula, who was born in 1997 to his former mistress Shari-Lea Hitchcock.

It is unlikely that the operations of the Visy empire will be disrupted by Pratt's death. Over the last five years, Pratt has carefully planned his succession and eased himself out of the day-to-day running of Visy.

Anthony will step in as the leader of the Visy group, which will then be split equally between his three oldest children. Pratt Industries USA will go to Anthony. The family investment vehicle, Thorney Holdings, will go to daughter Heloise and her husband, Alex Waislitz. Visy Industrial Packaging will be taken over by daughter Fiona and her husband, Raphael Geminder. Each business has been managed by its owners for the past few years.

Visy's $3 billion Australian manufacturing group, which is comprised of a cardboard, paper and recycling businesses, will be owned in equal share by the three children.

Pratt's youngest daughter Paula has a Sydney mansion held in trust for her and is expected to receive a large cash payment in 2016, when she turns 18.

In addition to these carefully-laid succession plans, Pratt and his family have brought in a hand-picked team of non-family board members, led by former Foster's boss John Murphy as chief executive and another Foster's boss, Ted Kunkel, as chairman.

Other board members include former Telstra executive Ted Pretty and former Australian Rugby captain John Eales.

Pratt's life is the classic migrant-made-good story. He was born in the Polish city of Gdañsk in 1934 and emigrated to Australia in 1938, settling in the Victorian town of Shepparton. In 1945, Pratt's father Leon founded the Visy business with the Feldman family.

Pratt, who studied at the University of Melbourne and had aspired to be an actor at one stage, become chief executive of Visy in 1965 after the death of his father. At the time, the company's revenue was just $5 million.

Over the next 40 years, Pratt built Visy into one of the world's largest packaging companies, expanding beyond Australia to establish large packaging operations in the United States. The group, which has revenue of more than $3 billion, controls around half of the Australian packaging industry, with rival Amcor controlling the other half.

It was the relationship between Visy and Amcor that badly tarnished Pratt's reputation. In 2007, Pratt confessed that he and two other senior Visy executives had illegally fixed the prices of cardboard boxes with executives from Amcor.

Last year the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission bought criminal charges against Pratt, alleging he provided false or misleading evidence during the ACCC's Visy/Amcor cartel probe. However, a last minute request from Pratt's lawyers resulted in the charges being dropped just one day before his death.

While Pratt had built a reputation as one of Australia's most generous philanthropists – his foundation is estimated to give away up to $14 million a year at last count – the fallout from the cartel episode threatened to destroy Pratt's standing in the community.

Last March, he voluntarily handed in his Companion and Officer of the Order of Australia medals. He also gave up his presidency of the Carlton Football Club when the criminal charges were made.

Richard Pratt was given many titles during his long career: entrepreneur, philanderer, philanthropist and – in the final years of his life – disgraced billionaire.

Only time will tell which title Pratt is remembered by.