Once powerful corporate raider Rod Price files for bankruptcy

IN 1994 a wealthy and powerful Rodney Price swept into a function at Government House in Adelaide and muttered to an associate "Adelaide. What a f---ing dump."

It was a joke; Price was born in Adelaide in 1943, and even after attaining fame and fortune as his Industrial Equity Ltd roamed the share registers of the likes of Woolworths, Pioneer International and John Fairfax Holdings, obviously retained some affection for the city. Apparently he still does.

As recently a month ago he was telling business associates his residential address was in Avenue Del A Costa, Monte Carlo, Monaco.

That is where a Sydney property developer, Andrew Richardson, sent him court papers threatening bankruptcy on June 19.

But at 2.30pm last Tuesday Mr Price was in the more prosaic surrounds of the offices of the insolvency firm BRI Ferrier in Adelaide.

He had decided to pre-empt Mr Richardson's court action by filing for bankruptcy himself. His residential address on the official papers is South Terrace, Adelaide. He does not own the property. Nor did he own his previous Australian residence, an apartment in the stylish Bennelong building opposite the Sydney Opera House.

Actually, Mr Price has no personal property holdings. In fact he has very few assets. There is $1000 in a National Australia Bank account and $2000 with the Commonwealth Bank.

He has an ANZ Stadium membership, which he values at $50,000, and a share in the National Golf Cub, Melbourne, worth $85,000.

Alan Scott, the BRI Ferrier partner who will now sort through Mr Price's affairs on behalf of creditors owed $35 million, says the only asset that will support his investigations is a 20 per cent stake in a pub in an Adelaide shopping centre, the Castle Tavern.

Mr Richardson is the largest Australian creditor. He is claiming $1,999,900, the unpaid portion of a $2 million deposit on a yet-to-be-built $20 million penthouse in Elizabeth Street, Sydney.

Most of the $35 million is owed to financiers in London.

"What seems to have triggered it is a lot of projects in Europe having fallen foul of how they were supposed to be going, and I guess the global financial crisis hasn't helped," Mr Scott said.

"There were a lot of projects happening at the same time."

Mr Price signed personal guarantees for #13 million ($26 million) to Abbey Financial Services in London.

Another personal guarantee for #350,000 is to a Monaco company White Coppice Ltd, understood to be controlled by the expatriate businessman Bob Cowper.

There is no sign on the formal documents of the substantial rural holdings Mr Price has been connected with in the Riverina, held by the Four Arrows group.

Mr Scott said: "The advice I have received so far is that those properties are separate from Rodney Price's personal interests notwithstanding they may be owned by his family, which he may or may not have had some involvement with in the past. That's an issue we must look at over the next while."

In fact the Price family may have sold the properties. Speculation was rife yesterday of a $100 million sale to Nick Paspaley of the Paspaley pearling family.

The Paspaleys, already owners of extensive rural holdings in Mudgee and Coolah, are tipped to be the buyer of South Tahara and perhaps the entire Four Arrows amalgamation.

Although the Paspaley fortune is generated through the pearling business, the family's business interests have continued to grow through diversifying into property, retail and investment.

The Four Arrows portfolio includes six Riverina properties totalling 77,376 hectares (with 59,234 megalitres of water licences) that were marketed through Meares & Associates, with expressions of interest closing on June 10. The handling agent, Chris Meares, could not be contacted for comment.

South Tahara, which is the Wagga Wagga headquarters of the Four Arrows rural management portfolio, failed to sell late last year after it was listed at more than $20 million. Also for sale at that time was an adjoining 6000-hectare holding, North Tahara, for $23 million.

The 2666-hectare South Tahara holding, with a 6.4 kilometre frontage to the Murrumbidgee River and about 3000 megalitres of irrigation licences, is the showpiece the Price family's rural empire. Designed by the architects Harvey Little and Alexander Michael, the three-level 14-bedroom mansion 11 kilometres from Wagga Wagga was built between 1989 and 1991.

With 2200 square metres of living space in three wings, it has a magnificent library, two offices, formal and informal dining and sitting areas, a billiard room, gymnasium, spa and sauna. On its northern side are a large patio and verandas overlooking the garden and river beyond. In 1991 the Prices added a separate French-inspired pool-conservatory and a business complex.

Surrounding the homestead are 10 hectares of gardens with a scotch elm lined driveway, laurel hedges and a sunken garden planted with 1200 roses in pastel shades.

Four Arrows's other properties include: Binnowee, a 1311-hectare dairy near Wagga; Toronga Station, a 39,375-hectare irrigation, farming and livestock investment near Hay in the western Riverina; Belvedere Almond Farm, a 1104-hectare almond farm at Narrandera; and Tubbo Station, a 28,140-hectare intensive irrigation farming and grazing entity at Darlington Point. Dating back to the 1840s, Tubbo Station has had only three owners.

Mr Price best known in Australian business circles for his role as the Australian chief executive of the corporate-raiding empire of the New Zealander Sir Ron Brierley was also active in property development and rural industries. His company chairmanships ranged from John Fairfax Holdings, publisher of the Herald, to Australian Wool Services.

He became chief executive of Sir Ron's Industrial Equity Ltd in 1986, its heyday of takeovers of blue-chip Australian companies, including Woolworths and Pioneer International. The parent company, Brierley Investments, took a 25 per cent stake in Fairfax.

When Mr Price left Brierley Investments in May 1998 he also relinquished the Fairfax chair, which he had taken only six months earlier when Sir Laurence Street retired from the role. In the 1990s he was an active property developer in London.

Mr Price is unlikely to return to Monaco soon. Mr Scott has taken possession of his passport, as is customary under the Bankruptcy Act.