Kennedy Trevor - Packers Lunch

Praise forPackers Lunch

No one is better placed than Australian Financial Review journalist Neil Chenoweth to cast a sceptical and observant eye over the Sydney corporate scene, connecting the dots and, ever so subtly, allowing the reader to connect even more; [Packers Lunch] is an exegesis of major importance, analysing with equal care power, greed and influence.

Sydney Morning Herald

[Chenoweth] does much more... than simply make sense of the tangled transactions and furtive finances of his protagonists, the books great achievement being its ability to weave its disparate strands into a broader narrative that takes in the political and cultural spheres as well as the corporate. This is a book about the shifting sands of the power structure within Australian society.

Australian Book Review

Chenoweth has performed for us... a literary pillorying where he, happy man, gets to throw all the ordure and the rotten vegies. It is deeply cathartic and satisfying.

Australian Financial Review Magazine

A brilliant exposition of business at the top end of town.

The Launceston Examiner

Praise for Neil ChenowethsRupert Murdoch(2002)
andVirtual Murdoch(2001)

As the fruit of many years of forensic reporting on Murdochs empire, Rupert Murdoch offers a damning indictment of its subjects business practices, cutting through the corporate spin and the secrecy.

New York Times

The book delivers an adrenaline kick roughly equivalent to the thrill of rifling through Murdochs PalmPilot and opening his mail. Its all here, every murky deal, every sworn enemy, every shocking lawsuit, every clever acquisition, every cynical rationlization, every accounting trick, every family crisis. Conspiracy theorists, beware: Chenoweth could be addictive.

Columbia Journalism Review

Superb, comprehensive... Chenoweths book is so overpowering that it calls into question the dedication of Murdochs previous biographers, notably William Shawcross, whose 1992 book lacked much of the meat Chenoweth unearthed.

Newsday, New York (Reviewer Jes Ledbetter,
business editor of TIME Europe)

Anyone interested in the power plays, Byzantine manoeuverings, personal vendettas, macho posturings, and megamedia mergers of the masters of the information revolution will be impressed by the authors wide-ranging knowledge and deft handling of the mysteries of high finance.

Washington Times

Who better than a hard-bitten Australian investigative journalist to tell the story of the Dirty Digger himself? This well-informed account of the rise and rise of Rupert Murdoch has more dramatic twists than a Jeffrey Archer novel: it is terrific stuff, with edge-of-the-seat deals, financial scandals, and colourful bit-part players ranging from Bill Gates to Tony Blair. Chenoweth not only profiles an extraordinary man, part gambler, part megalomaniac, but elucidates the key role played by the Murdochowned News Corporation in the global information revolution.

Sunday Telegraph, London

Neil Chenoweth

PACKERS
LUNCH

A rollicking tale of Swiss bank accounts and
money-making adventurers in the roaring 90s

First published in 2006

This edition published in 2007

Copyright Neil Chenoweth 2006, 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

Email: info@allenandunwin.com

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Chenoweth, Neil.

Packers lunch.

Includes index.
ISBN 978 1 74175 323 3 (pbk.).

1. Packer, Kerry, 1937-2005. 2. Kennedy, Trevor.
3. Richardson, Graham, 1949- . 4. Rivkin, Rene, 1944-2005.
5. Capitalism and mass media - Australia. 6. Capitalists and
financiers - Australia - Biography. 7. Stockbrokers
Australia - Biography. 8. Australia - Economic conditions
1990-2001. 9. Australia - Economic conditions - 2001- .
I. Title.

332.60994

Typeset in 12/15pt Granjon by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my parents
Joan Brooks the plain-speaking woman
and Norm Chenoweth, whose Thai name was Dr Loud Laugh.

Contents

T his book is a story about networks. Its focus is not the activities of the Packer family. Rather, it is about the people who from time to time have managed to find a seat at the Packer table. It follows the varying fortunes of some of these dinner guests.

I am deeply grateful for the assistance and friendship of Shraga Elam, whose work has had such a dramatic effect on the way offshore trading is understood in Australia; of Ali Cromie, who mixes outstanding investigative skills with a rare generosity of spirit; and Andrew Main, Colleen Ryan and Rosemarie Graffagnini at the Australian Financial Review.

Deborah Light started me on this book by lending me her copy of Corporate Cannibals, which I have cunningly managed to avoid returning. Im in the debt of my publisher and editor at the AFR, Michael Gill and Glenn Burge. My thanks also to Tony Byrne, Richard Coleman, Philip Cornford, Alan Deans, Fiona Buffini, Angus Grigg, Roger Johnstone, Kate McClymont, Julie Macken, Karen Maley, Anne Noonan, Bill Pheasant, Jeni Porter, Jimmy Tsimikas and Brook Turner as well as the many others who spoke to me off the record.

At Allen & Unwin it was a pleasure to work with Richard Walsh, Patrick Gallagher and Alex Nahlous. My thanks to my agent, the estimable John F. Thornton, who, in the event that he lived in Penzance, would clearly be a pirate. My family has been a continual support for me, in particular my wife Jolle.

Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to make her.

Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth, 1905

Lunch (ln), sb. 1 Obs. exc. Dial. Also 5 lonche. [App. Onomatopoeic. Cf DUNCH sb.] The sound made by the fall of a soft heavy body... She heard a lunch, bud she thoht it was th childer plaayin.

OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But Ill be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.

W.S. Gilbert and A. Sullivan
Pirates of Penzance, 1880

T here are moments in every mans life when circumstances turn against him. Adversity faces him on every side, even his own friends look at him askance and he must take matters into his own hands to strike out boldly in new directions. Moments, in short, when he has no other course but to book into a thoroughly expensive luxury hotel. As Trevor Kennedy flew into Heathrow airport in November 2003, he was facing one of those moments. In the early hours of Saturday morning, London is a cheerless desert for the lone wayfarer. Friendless, fatigued and forlorn, Kennedy made the best of it and headed for a friendly haven. He took himself to Piccadilly and booked into the Ritz.