Search for the main game - Author: Angus Grigg
Date: 27/12/2006

The Financial Review

Peter Holmes a Court can do with his life as he chooses, and he is spoilt for choice.

Peter Holmes a Court is distracted. Sitting in Beppi's private dining room in east Sydney, flanked by bottles of perfectly aged red, Holmes a Court is making a poor attempt at multi-tasking.

He's taking phone calls and tapping out text messages, all the while going the long way around his new life.

Dressed in the uniform of the independently wealthy - cream suit, no tie, RM Williams boots - Holmes a Court comes across as part lifestyle coach, part businessman, a country gentleman and involved father.

There are no short answers. Like his late father, the storied corporate raider Robert, sentences are punctuated with quotes, riddles and extended pauses.

He's the eldest son, the inheritor - for better or worse - of what was left of the fortune built by one of the most feared of the ubiquitous corporate raiders of the 1980s.

His father tilted at windmills - at BHP in fact - but his Bell Group was eventually taken out by an even wilder businessman: Alan Bond. The Holmes a Court financial empire took one of the biggest hits in the sharemarket crash of 1987.

It was a global correction that gave the word entrepreneur a very bad name.

Over a lunch of warm figs, West Australian scampi and dry white wine, Peter jumps from subject to subject, trying to explain his life in the two years since he abruptly departed as chief executive of the Australian Agricultural Company.

And what a life it appears to have been.

Time is his greatest luxury. In a city of overworked executives, Holmes a Court talks of spending time with his young sons in remote Aboriginal communities, and at a Fiji orphanage.

He was recently in New York to see his old boss, former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, lauded for his public service by German President Horst Kohler and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

He talks about James (Packer), Lachlan (Murdoch) and, of course, business partner Russell Crowe.

It's hard to miss Holmes a Court - he is Sydney's human headline. But equally, while he's tagged in the press as the "millionaire businessman", it's difficult to identify exactly what is going on.

He's got a lot happening, but at the same time he has no full-time job and no plans for a return to executive life.

Money does not appear to be a problem.

But despite the appearance of a charmed life, with ample time to balance family, work and the social pages, Holmes a Court appears to be searching for something else. He's not entirely lost; rather still looking for where his contribution will be made. While his dance card may be padded with roles as director of Queensland Rail, trustee of the Queensland Performing Arts Trust (he gets on well with Premier Peter Beattie) and chairman of the Sydney chapter of the Young Presidents Organisation, it is the South Sydney Rugby League Club, which he part owns with Crowe, which will be the big test.

And the next 12 months will be crucial. Winning control of Souths was more than just a battle for an underperforming rugby league club; it was a clash between Sydney's old guard and the city's new establishment. Holmes a Court, Crowe and TV personality Andrew Denton took on and won against adman John Singleton, radio broadcaster Alan Jones and Souths' former player and chairman George Piggins.

It was football politics and it may just determine Sydney's power players over the next decade. Most agree the old guard is unlikely to sit quietly in the shadows and those who opposed the partial privatisation are not afraid to play a little dirty.

During the campaign, Holmes a Court's qualifications were questioned, as was his share trading while at AAC. They were allegations without substance but damaging nonetheless.

Someone who knows Holmes a Court well from the Sydney scene says there are still plenty of questions about his business acumen and these will be answered over the next year.

Souths' success or otherwise will determine how he's viewed in the business world. If he can turn around its financial and on-field performance, his patchy career will turn the corner.

Fail and it will be a long road back. Holmes a Court is well aware of this.

"Souths is a tiny business, but the world is watching over your shoulder," he says.

Another who knows Holmes a Court well wonders if he has enough hard edges to run a football club. "He's a very community-minded person, but a job like Souths is one you can't escape," the source says. "I just wonder if in 10 years' time he will be the nice guy that got burnt."

This will be the test for Holmes a Court. There's no walking away from Souths. And having courted the tabloid media to win control of the club, his success or failure will be very public.

Holmes a Court's arrival in Sydney in 2000, with wife Divonne, followed what he likes to call a "transition period". It was a decision few other young couples could have made. Having sold out of the family business, Heytesbury, for a reported $30 million, auditions of six cities followed: New York, Los Angles, London, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

"Sydney is not the best place in the world to live or the best place to work, but it is the best place to live and work," Holmes a Court says. And so it was settled.

For Holmes a Court this followed 16 years out of the country. After finishing high school at Geelong Grammar he "fled" Australia to study at Middlebury College, an equally elite liberal arts university in rural Vermont, in America's north-east. Holmes a Court agrees he also "fled" a famous father, but said there was never an expectation for him to return to run the family business"

"My father was never a big family business type of person," he says.

Kent Anderson, now head of the Japan school at the Australian National University, who played rugby with Holmes a Court and joined the same fraternity, says his situation was not remarkable at the college.

"There were lots of international students from wealthy families, so it was no big deal," he says.

Anderson remembers the 1987 stockmarket crash when Holmes a Court didn't make it to rugby training for a couple of days, but apart from that there were no other clues that the family was under pressure.

Anderson says Holmes a Court finished a "rigorous" four-year degree in three years, after which he went on to read law at Oxford.

"I think he downplays his intellectual side but it's certainly there," Anderson says. "There's no question he's a smart guy." As a rugby player he remembers Holmes a Court as someone "who could take a hit" and as a great kicker of the ball, thanks to his days playing Australian Rules.

After Oxford he worked in New York for James Wolfensohn's investment bank. This was the start of what many describe as a patchy career, jumping between jobs. After only a year, over dinner in the company of legendary banker Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts fame, he told Wolfensohn he was bored senseless.

"Henry, who at that stage was a master of the universe, thought this was hilarious," Holmes a Court says.

Wolfensohn seemed to take it pretty well too and, as Holmes a Court tells it, helped him establish his own theatre company, Backrow Productions, which he ran for nearly six years before selling in 1999 and moving to Sydney to run AAC.

He parted company with AAC in confused circumstances in mid-2004 and Holmes a Court has talked little about his exit.

"The guy for the war is not always the guy for the peace," he says a little enigmatically. This is Holmes a Court the life coach, the master of management jargon, speaking. To him his job at the head of AAC was about "change management", transforming a 175-year-old cattle company.

"I was right for that period of the company," he says. "I'm not a line management cost cutter."

Chairman Nick Burton Taylor won't fault Holmes a Court and denies any rift with the board.

"He was very good for the company, brought a different way of thinking to the business," he says. "Not everything he tried worked, but those decisions were taken with the full backing of the board."

But Holmes a Court does hint that his departure was not entirely of his own making.

"Do you have some argy bargy when there is a coming and going of executives?" he asks, before answering himself.

"Of course you do: it's called negotiation."

This negotiation looks to have worked out very nicely for him, as he walked with shares and options in the company worth about $12 million. Combined with the money from selling out of Heytesbury, this suggests his net worth is about $40 million - a comfortable pile for a 38-year-old considering his next move.

So what he does with this money and his time becomes the big question.

Souths is sure to play a central role and Holmes a Court says it's about more than the football.

He talks about a "fabric of Sydney" issue and a platform to help with indigenous affairs and work in the broader community.

And this just might be his calling. In an age when few have time for "worthy causes", Holmes a Court has the three ingredients to make a difference: profile, money and time.

"There will be more to say on this shortly," he says walking out the door into a waiting taxi, to collect his kids.

Thanks, CGee