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Rubbernose
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|  | Frank Lowy story in AFR
« Thread Started on Jun 29, 2007, 4:00pm » | |
Australian Financial Review...
Got it from someone with a subscription for those who wanna read it. It's long, needs to be spread over two posts...
http://www.afrmagazine.com/
![[image]](http://www.afrmagazine.com/images/cover_story_img_bottom.jpg)
The Lowy code
COVER
Story by Andrew Clark
Frank Lowy used everything he had to boost soccer in Australia to an international level. On the eve of the AFC Asian Cup in July, with the Socceroos starting as favourite, he reveals new details of the global game of mixing business and sport.
It was a sparkling summer's day and Frank Lowy's Ilona IV was decked out in bunting and flags. Nattily dressed, Lowy beamed as he welcomed the sporting world's great and good on board his luxury yacht. Like Lowy, they were attending the 2004 Olympics in Athens and settled down in the Ilona IV's dining-room for a memorable lunch.
At first blush, it looked like upmarket schmoozing. But it was also, he says, a "turning-point", marking the real beginning of Australian soccer, after half a century of stasis. Frank Lowy was artfully using the trappings of his great self-made wealth to persuade sport's movers and shakers to allow Australia into the Asian division of FIFA, soccer's global fiefdom. This shift released competitive energy for the local game to grow, and gave it geographic coherence after decades of surviving, epiphyte-like, on the tree of European soccer.
More important, this networking presaged the end of the "great black hole" that threatened Australia's place in the world. The life of people and nations is never secure if they don't get on with neighbours, as two world wars show. "The great black hole" in Australia's relations with South-East Asia has - as Allan Gyngell, head of the Lowy Institute for Inter- national Policy, puts it - "always been sport". There "hasn't been anything to get ordinary people engaged", he says.
Now there is, thanks largely to Lowy, Australia's most successful migrant, the nation's second richest man, and the world's biggest shopping centre developer - a mćstro of the malls. He is the most influential Australian outside our shores, and the most significant business figure in Australia's postwar history (excluding Rupert Murdoch, who has been an American citizen for 22 years).
Frank Lowy is also a lifelong soccer tragic. In just three years, Lowy delivered the soccer trifecta: Australia won a place in last year's soccer World Cup in Germany; the introduction of a new national league competition where teams are no longer based on ethnic identity; and Australia's entry into the Asian division of world soccer.
"[Australian] soccer was a divisive sport," says Lowy, in his headquarters in Westfield Towers in Sydney. "It's changed from division to unity. It means less racial tension, and other benefits are immeasurable. Now we are very involved with the people [of Asian countries]. What does that mean? It's a lot more than just kicking the ball around."
In September 2005, Australia became the 46th member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It competes in Asian qualifiers for the World Cup, providing a more viable route to soccer's premier competition. In the three-year period ending in 2009, the Australian team will play at least 18 home and away matches against other Asian sides, and two local A-League teams compete each year in the Asian Champions League.
The three-week-long AFC Asian Cup starts on July 7. Australia, which reached the knockout round of the soccer World Cup final in Germany last year, is starting as favourite, but is expecting stiff competition from Japan, Iran, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. Initially, it is playing in a pool that also includes Thailand, Iraq and Oman. The final will be played in Jakarta on July 29.
However Australia fares, the Asian Cup is expected to give local soccer a big boost after the strong showing at last year's World Cup, and a successful domestic season. The A-League competition grand final, between Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United at Melbourne's Telstra Dome in February, was attended by 55,000 people and generated a TV audience of 706,000. Melbourne Victory doubled its crowds during the season to an impressive average of 27,000, higher than the average for any Sydney-based rugby league club, and ranking with the drawing power of some AFL games.
As Lowy knows, success breeds success, percolating over into business support. Starting from an almost non-existent base, the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) has increased revenue by more than six times in the past three years to an estimated $60 million-plus in 2006-07. The FFA now has some big-name sponsors, including Qantas, Telstra, Nike and Fox Sports, the last paying $120 million for a seven-year agreement to broadcast A-League games, Asian Cup fixtures and the Asian Champions League.
David Malone, Fox Sports chief executive officer, says Fox Sports' involvement in the new competition was a "leap of faith" that has already proved to be a "good decision". Since the new competition was introduced, soccer "has lifted substantially", and Fox Sports expects the Asian Cup to "go very well". He describes Lowy's role as "absolutely significant". Malone has been struck by Lowy's energy and passion. "He exudes a great deal of confidence and belief in what he is doing and that gives a great deal of confidence to those around him," he says.
If the Asian Cup takes off as a global event, TV audiences will soar, attracted to the physical game that has become the hallmark of Australian soccer. It's not impossible to visualise a mini-replication of the stunning success of the English Premier League, with international fan clubs, and the TV rights-generated wealth pouring in, helping to keep Australian soccer's future elite players at home.
Kate Meyers, a spokeswoman for Nike, says the global company has "enormous confidence in the future of football" in Australia. Nike, the first sponsor of the restructured game, recently re-signed for a nine-year contract. This underlines "the hugely exciting potential" of the game here, says Meyers.
She says there are now 450,000 registered soccer players in Australia, compared with 328,000 who play netball and 309,000 who take part in AFL games. Australia's Asia Cup involvement should generate more marketing opportunities through big crowds and a bigger TV audience, with viewers at home able to watch games at family-friendly times, compared with the eight to 11 hours time difference with Europe and 14 to 19 with the US. "It's incredibly exciting that Australian football is part of the Asian league," Meyers says.
Frank Lowy has never before publicly revealed the inside details of one of the most significant sporting and diplomatic coups in Australia's history. In 2003, "when I took control of the game," Lowy recalls, "the head of FIFA [Sepp Blatter] sent a letter saying 'sort out the game in Australia and then try and work together with Oceania to make [it] more of a force'. Of course, I tried to do that." Lowy later decided "there's no future because they're small island countries and there's no competition for us. So we worked out a strategy that [Oceania] would be better off without Australia. Why would they be better off? More even competition. After a while, they bought it - meaning they believe it is good for them.
"Then you go to FIFA to get yourself out of there because you know you've got to get Asia to accept you and you've got to get Oceania to let you go. We find the rationale. I find myself a common objective with the president of the Asian Football Confederation [Mohamed bin Hammam]. They knew Asia would benefit from Australia because we bring sporting administration skills into Asia and that's what they're looking for. Many Australians work there now as administrators, so they benefit from us. It has to be a win-win situation. You [both] get on the same page, and that's what happened.
"The next time I went to Zurich [in June 2004] I saw Blatter again and told him there's not going to be any progress and we need to be in Asia. And he said: 'Why don't you send someone to the next [Asian football] conference [held in Beijing the following month]?' And that was the beginning of the Asian affair, so to speak."
The then FFA chief executive, John O'Neill, met Asian soccer officials, then the AFC invited Lowy and O'Neill to Kuala Lumpur for a 'gala prize-giving'. "I was greeted very warmly by Mohamed [bin Hammam]," says Lowy. "It was an instant friendship. It was an acceptance by him of me and Australia, and I had the same feelings towards him. And then he came [here] to see what Australia has to offer," visiting the Australian Institute of Sport and other facilities.
Lowy started working on the rest of the AFC. O'Neill, who returned as CEO of Australian Rugby Union in June, says Lowy's "ability to get in doors is unparalleled. Once Frank embraces something, that's it." In addition, Lowy's trappings of great wealth, like the Ilona IV and his private plane, "really impressed people at FIFA".
Lowy acknowledges he "used everything I had". When the Ilona IV was moored at Piraeus Harbour in Athens for his special lunch "it was a beautiful day. Sepp Blatter was there and the Olympic people, and many delegates. I was surprised how many people accepted the invitation, and the atmosphere was really wonderful. I said, 'I'm very glad to have you here as my guests, but I will be looking to you to help us get Australia under way in this game.' They agreed.
"Sometimes if you tell people what you want from them they appreciate it and understand it. You need to be direct. I said, 'Don't forget I am going to call on you', and then Blatter gave a very nice speech, and it was really the setting of the scene. Wherever I go now they still talk about it.
"I went to a lot of meetings, a lot of games; I met all the delegates. One particular delegate was totally against us and I won him over in the end just by talking to him. In fact, he was the one who moved at the executive committee of FIFA to sanction this move from Oceania to Asia."
By establishing this powerful connection with Asia, Lowy has given Australia a populist base to operate in, amid the intense energy generated by rapid-growth Asian countries such as China, India and Vietnam. This may prove to be one of the more important Australian diplomatic initiatives since World War II, arguably ranking with the Australian-inspired creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) group, and of the Cairns Group of agricultural exporting countries.
What makes it more remarkable is that it was envisaged, planned, finessed and executed by one man who is not a minister, a politician, or even a government official, but a first-generation Australian, a self-made billionaire businessman who trusts his instincts. French novelist Honoré de Balzac once said in an ironic comment that cemeteries were full of irreplaceable people. In Lowy's case, it's hard to conceive how any other Australian could pull off the Asian soccer coup.
The stakes are high because, while money may be the new religion in the globalised noughties, sport is king. Thanks to the nuclear mushroom, digitised warfare, and the quagmire in Iraq, national prestige is no longer measured primarily by military prowess. Along with international economic performance tables, sport has taken its place. If you have any doubt, just look at the money and psychic energy that prestige-obsessed France invested in staging the 2002 soccer World Cup, where it won the ultimate prize, and its similar investment in this September's Rugby World Cup.
"Australia's new sporting relationship with Asia will, most obviously, create new commercial opportunities for Australian business," says the Lowy Institute for International Policy (a think tank specialising in reports on international policy, established by Lowy) in a recent study on the international implications of Australia's transformed soccer scene. The report was not produced at Frank Lowy's suggestion, according to institute head Gyngell.
"If new business opportunities are the most evident potential products of this looming sporting relationship, football's impact on popular engagement between Australian and Asian societies could, over the longer term, be more transformational," the report says. "[It] may also provide a way to bypass the tortuous debate over whether Australia is an Asian nation. Identity reflects different elements, from geography and culture to ethnicity. Football will add another meaningful strand ... to a web of ties placing [us] in the region."
"I think soccer is changing Australia," Lowy says, citing recent high attendances. "You go to games on Sunday afternoon and see the beaming faces of a father and two kids. They greet you very nicely, you know: 'Good on you, Frank.' They're not Serbian, they're not Ukrainian; these people are second or third-generation Australians. It's beautiful. It's new soccer and new Australia.
"We live in a big world now," he says. "And Australia is no longer an island. It's a global player and it needs to have influence in order to meet its objectives. Of course it has a government, an economy, but that's not sufficient. We need to get to a level that government and diplomacy can't."
He refers to a recent meeting at the Lowy Institute of ambassadors from the ASEAN (the Association of South-East Asian Nations) countries. "Why were they there? They were there because of football. We are politically in the ASEAN group [Australia is not a member of ASEAN but attends ASEAN-hosted regional meetings], and we are football-wise in the ASEAN group. I've asked the government to get the Australian ambassadors in those countries to get close to the football people. It's not easy, but it opens the door for us."
However, the process hasn't all been plain sailing. O'Neill, who left his job as chief executive of the FFA after fewer than three years, acknowledges there were disagreements with Lowy, although he "enjoyed the life immensely. Both of us look at the scoreboard and what was achieved as a team. There were far more high points than low points."
The man who presided over the renaissance of Australian rugby before moving to the FFA, says he operated as a "high-impact player". The high point of the Asian campaign occurred at the Kuala Lumpur meeting of the AFC at the end of 2004. "We really cracked it." Later, on the flight home, O'Neill ordered three rounds of Midleton Irish whiskey, and he and Lowy drank to their success. "Frank said: 'I've never had so much fun'."
Looking back, O'Neill says it was "inevitable that Frank would be hands-on and I didn't think it would be otherwise". There were "strong debates about four to five issues", such as the appointment of the national coach, and relations between head office and eight new clubs belonging to the A-League. "Much was made at the time of my remark that there was creative tension."
Lowy set a furious pace. "Life's a route march. If you reach a milestone you celebrate and then march on. You're a lot like a prizefighter - you're not ready for the next round," according to O'Neill. A sign of lingering tension between the two is contained in O'Neill's remark that "Asia wasn't on Frank's agenda when I joined". Asked about O'Neill's comment, Lowy replies: "He would say that."
Meanwhile, Australia is competing in its first AFC Cup, and Frank Lowy is being Frank Lowy. He's criss-crossing the globe; signing off on a new shopping centre in the US; attending a critical meeting of the Asian soccer division in Kuala Lumpur; inspecting progress in Westfield's plans to deliver a pre-2012 Olympic Games shopping makeover to London; catching up on the political scene in Israel in the wake of a critical report of the Ehud Olmert government's handling of the war with Iranian-backed Hezbollah; and supervising elections for a new board for the FFA. Oh, and spending three hours a day on the phone to his son, Peter, who runs the US operations.
To describe Lowy as intense and energetic may be correct, but a rounded portrait of Lowy should include his courtly, Central European charm and personal warmth. He seems relaxed - by Frank Lowy's standards, anyway - wearing a blue business suit, light blue shirt and blue tie. He is fit-looking and compact, with even skin and alert eyes. Sporting an ample mane of white hair, Lowy shows no sign that, in his 77th year, he is slowing down.
In the same week he spoke to The AFR Magazine, he addressed his company's annual general meeting, swatting away questions about board independence, and making the odd quip: "We can't own the world - even though we are trying." He spent four days being questioned by Israeli police about the Bank Leumi-Ehud Olmert affair in Israel (Lowy is not, and never was, a suspect; just a witness, according to Israeli police) then jetted out to tend to his affairs in the US, Asia and Europe.
So what makes Frank Lowy run? Money? He's already worth about $6 billion, has his own jet and luxury yacht, houses in Australia and the US, and a $13 million-plus salary package. Fame? Lowy is a household name in Australia, well known in the US, England, Israel and New Zealand, and, through soccer, is gaining a profile in Asia.
(continued)
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Rubbernose
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| | Re: Lowy interview in AFR
« Reply #1 on Jun 29, 2007, 4:01pm » | |
(continued)
To understand what makes Frank run, the observer needs to go back 65 years to wartime Budapest. One of Europe's great river cities of magnificent avenues, Hapsburg mansions, baroque churches, delightful and roomy cafés, and a parliament building that is more impressive, if not older, than Westminster, wartime Budapest was hell for 12-year-old Frantisek Lowy.
His father, Hugo, a modest, gentle man, was marched off to Auschwitz concentration camp and beaten to death by a guard as he tried to retrieve some religious artfacts. Most members of his mother's family suffered a similar fate. To survive the anti-Semitic orgy of violence, remaining members of the Lowy family split up and took on assumed identities.
According to the Lowy biography (Frank Lowy: Pushing the Limits, HarperCollins, 2000), by Jill Margo, men's health columnist for the AFR, at one point his brother, John, worked in a Gestapo garage, where he serviced notorious SS officer Adolf Eichmann's car, "and received a tip for his efficiency".
Frank lived off his wits, developing a sixth sense about where to find food, eluding the Gestapo and violent Hungarian anti-Semitic gangs. While foraging, he would see the Danube running red. A favoured pastime of irregulars from the quisling Arrow Cross (Nyilas) Hungarian government was to tie three Jews together at the edge of one of the bridges crossing the river, shoot one and then watch the dead weight unbalance the trio, tipping them into the icy waters.
Lowy told Margo: "I don't know how, but I kept on finding food. During this period we [Frank and his mother, Ilona] grew very close, relying on each other to stay alive. I went through many of life's experiences in a very short space of time - living, dying, being scared, afraid. Once father was taken away, my childhood ended."
A man who takes regular exercise and cares for his appearance, Lowy is troubled by bouts of nervous tension. Given the scale of his achievement - his family, his business, in sport, his civic generosity such as founding the Lowy Institute, and involvement in Jewish community affairs - these periods are linked to loss of family and the recurring nightmare of his wartime years.
After the war, Lowy travelled to Palestine. The 17-year-old refugee became a commando in the Golani Brigade, part of the Haganah, the Zionist underground army controlled by the Jewish Agency. In late November 1947, the UN voted in favour of the partition of Palestine, and Lowy continued fighting with the Golani Brigade against Arab armies to secure the land that made up the state of Israel.
Rafi Kocer, Frank Lowy's commanding officer, later told Margo: "The feeling is that we were the vanguard, not only of the Jewish people but of the new world which was rising from the rubble of war. It was a type of humanistic fundamentalism, a virgin belief that man is free and has limitless abilities."
The fledgling state of Israel, Margo wrote, gave Lowy a "fresh perspective. Rather than forcing him to live defensively, the country schooled him to fight fiercely for what could be his. Instead of depriving and hurting him, in its rugged way it fed and nurtured him."
Politically, the Jewish Agency and the Haganah were the genesis for the Labour Party in Israel. Under David Ben Gurion, and later Golda Meir, it dominated Israeli politics until the election of the Likud government in 1976, three years after Israel's close shave in the Yom Kippur War. The Likud's roots were in the Irgun gang, led by Menachem Begin, who later became prime minister. The Irgun advocated a greater Israel, and orchestrated the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, in which, despite a telephone warning, 91 people were killed. Thirty years later Begin led the push for Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories, captured by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967.
More than 60 years after he arrived in the Middle East, Lowy often talks about how "emotional" he feels about the Jewish state. He wants a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians but, like many old Labour Party supporters, his position on the Occupied Territories is ambivalent. Many who broadly belong to the Lowy approach are reluctant to offer up all the occupied territories in return for peace and recognition, arguing this is because so many Arabs remain committed to the destruction of Israel.
Apart from close connections to Israeli leaders such as Olmert, Lowy is a generous contributor to Jewish charities and takes strong positions on Israeli issues in Australia. In 2003 he unsuccessfully lobbied former NSW premier Bob Carr against awarding the Sydney Peace Prize to Dr Hanan Ashrawi, the prominent Palestinian rights advocate.
Despite his hero status in Israel, Lowy left the fledgling state in 1952, largely because surviving members of his family, including his beloved mother, had migrated to Australia. Once in Sydney, he took odd jobs, opened a delicatessen with a fellow Hungarian, John Saunders, at Blacktown in the western suburbs, and they, and their business, thrived. It was a different Australia. Before the great migration wave permeated society, it was overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic, and prematurely set in its ways. People drove Holdens, had chops, tomatoes and mashed potato for dinner, rarely went out during the week, and regularly sang God Save the Queen. Soccer was often dismissed as 'wogball'.
Demography may be destiny, as Peter Costello likes saying, but it was people such as Lowy and Saunders, and fellow Hungarians such as Sir Peter Abeles, who rushed Australia's demographic destiny along, giving it new vitality and texture. The Lowy-Saunders delicatessen stocked what was then regarded as exotic fare - salami, pickled herrings and olives, plus an espresso bar with music - and the place took off.
Observing the booming impact migration was having on local real estate, the partners decided to go into property development, then branched out into building shops. This was the beginning of Westfield, named after Sydney's west, and the fact that many developments were on fields. The qualities that made Lowy one of the most successful businessmen in the world soon showed.
An autodidact, he had an extraordinary grasp of legal documents - "God is detail," he tells The AFR Magazine - was a shrewd negotiator, incredibly focused, persuasive, and gave, and was given in return, great loyalty, with a remarkable capacity for fostering long-term business relationships.
Soon after the Lowy-Saunders partnership began retail developments in the west of Sydney, it was approached by major department store chain, Snow's, to build a shop. Later, Lowy formed an enduring relationship with Coles. These crucial links were replicated many times, contributing to Westfield's stunning success.
The shopping centre development concept was perfected by Westfield. "Operationally, they're superb," according to investment banker Tony Berg, who was managing director of Hill Samuel and Macquarie Bank, before becoming chief executive of Boral. "The knowledge of what makes a shopping centre work flows through their blood."
Lowy says flexibility is essential in business. "That's where you can get stuck or your ego gets in the way when you say, 'that's the only way to do it'. There are many ways to do the same thing. There has to be work, hard work. You can make up for many inefficiencies with doing your homework; then the focus; then, of course, the application; then the people. Many people find they get on very well with the people around them but not below them. I think you have got to get on with all. I am very fortunate. I still have friends from when we arrived in Australia in 1952."
Lowy may consult with business academics, but he's no managerialist. "I do so many things - business, sports administration - by instinct. I have a gut feeling that gives me the strength to follow my convictions." According to Berg, a long-time Lowy adviser, "his instincts are always telling him what to do." Says Lowy: "You inherit certain things. They say that if you are very close to your mother, you have some aspects of that. I was very close to my mother; very, very close. I still mourn her. She passed away in 1962. I had such a difficult childhood. To survive I had to use everything at my disposal. [Now] I make up my mind about people I can trust."
Another telling Lowy attribute is his skill at attracting a group of brilliant young turks around him. He stimulates ideas and drives them hard. They have included people such as Tony Berg, David Gonski and Fred Hilmer. Berg says of Lowy: "Frank's genius was to recognise that, strategically, something needed to be done. Then he was superb at doing the arrangements."
After decades of working close to Lowy, some of the young turks secured CEO positions, but none has replicated Lowy's verve. They have been tough, like Lowy, but without the commercial prescience, superhuman drive, capacity to compress time, calculated risk taking, personal warmth made more compelling by an egalitarian demeanour in casual encounters, and ability to generate extraordinary loyalty.
Years after Westfield had floated and become a major force in shopping centres, Lowy launched the Westfield Trust. It wasn't Australia's first property trust, but Lowy was the effective global pioneer for the public listing of large swathes of real estate development. "Frank was always at the forefront of a market trend," Berg says, and through Westfield Trust he "created a vehicle that could generate capital".
Lowy's corporate leadership shows in results. Westfield is now the largest retail property group in the world. It has investment interests in 121 shopping centres in Australia, the US - where almost half its business is located - the UK and New Zealand, with a total value in excess of $60.7 billion.
Lowy remains executive chairman of Westfield and shows no sign of slowing down or leaving. A decade-old succession plan is in place where his three sons, David, 52, Peter, 48, and Steven, 44, who are joint managing directors, would work closely together and report to the board, which would have an independent, non-executive chairman. (Their mother, Shirley, has been Lowy's wife for 53 years.) At the time the succession plan was released, Lowy said: "There is no need for any of them [his sons] to be anointed successor, as each of them could do the job."
Approaching his four score years, Lowy's legacy is ubiquitous. It's in the big crowds at soccer internationals at home; the massive Westfield development at London's White City; a new Westfield mall in San Francisco that encompasses the city's famous 100-year-old dome; hordes of shoppers at Westfield Bondi Junction; the remarkable success of the Lowy Institute; an unparalleled network of contacts, from Rupert Murdoch to Ehud Olmert, John Howard to Bob Hawke; and countless business careers he has fostered across three continents. But there's not much point in canvassing the Lowy legacy with the man himself:
he's still too busy creating it.
Who's the kid on the cover?
Terry Antonis, 13, is the future of Australian soccer. Three years ago he was picked to be part of a special soccer video, overseen by England great, David Beckham. Now he is being courted by European clubs such as Marseille and Inter Milan, to become part of their junior competition. It's a rule of the UEFA Champions League in Europe that eight players from each club list must be graduates of their own junior teams. So the clubs have sent scouts to Australia to lure Terry. He and members of his family have already been on a visit to France as the guest of Marseille.
The treatment, according to father Peter, a Sydney electrician, was "wonderful". Meanwhile Terry is continuing his intensive soccer training at the NSW Institute of Sport and studying at the Westfields Sports High School in Sydney's west. During the photo shoot in Alexandria, a Sydney industrial suburb, Lowy was relaxed and chatty with Tim Cahill, the face of modern Australian soccer, and Terry Antonis (pictured right) as they bounced soccer balls on their heads and knees. Cahill, 27, the matinee idol of Australian soccer since he slotted two late goals to secure a win against Japan in last year's World Cup in Germany, has been resting while undergoing rehabilitation for a broken foot. But he's looking forward to the Asian Cup, a competition he ranks as second only to the World Cup. Australia has a "massive" chance of winning some silverware, says Cahill, who plays for English Premier League club Everton.
Frank Lowy on:
Iraq four years on
The Iraqi exercise, had it been successful, would have been a transforming event not only in the Middle East but worldwide. You would have had a country that hopefully had Western sentiment between Iran, Syria and the rest. So the stakes were very high. Obviously it does not appear that that is going to be achieved, and there is a big price to pay for non-achieving. But hopefully there is still some semblance of a different Iraq than what it was. Maybe - big maybe - it will be an Iraq that will be more favourable and more democratic than the [Saddam Hussein-ruled] Iraq. You have to be optimistic to try to think that. I don't think it's all lost [although] most people kind of say that.
The George Bush presidency
I think very highly of the American people - very, very highly. America is a great country. They do a lot for the world, which is either unnoticed or not appreciated. As for the Bush presidency, I don't want to make a direct [comment]. I'm really apolitical; I'm not partisan.
Foreign takeovers of Australian companies
Where [the government] intervenes or where it doesn't intervene is a very fine judgement because you are interfering in legitimate commerce. When it becomes the national interest, then a government has to do what it feels it has to do, whether it's popular or not. But whether it's in the national interest or not, that's a very, very fine decision. If you interfere in the process, then you drive away investment. If you don't interfere but there's a national icon that really, you know, really has to be protected, it's very rare but sometimes there's [a need].
The bid for Qantas
(The following comments were made before the collapse of the Airline Partners of Australia bid for Qantas.)
There are some very, very emotional things about Qantas. Whether it's right or wrong, I think you could say there are preferences; that people would like Australians to own it. So there is an emotional attachment. It used to be some time ago that every nation wanted to have an airline, for strategic reasons. Is that still a valid point today? I don't know.
The role of private equity
This has evolved in the past few years. It's a legitimate business. People get together and say we can make a lot more out of this company than what it is worth now. Good or bad will be known much later. You must have concerns. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating: what happens over a period of five to 10 years. Many of these private equity deals will be refloated again with improved management. It's hard to say 'yes it's good' or 'no it's not good'. In some cases it's good and in other cases it may not be that good.
Yellow card moments
In 2000, Lowy apologised for Westfield's role in a series of clandestine campaigns to thwart potential business rivals. After some resistance, details emerged of the group's involvement with bogus community action groups. The campaigns, run since 1993, successfully stopped two Woolworths developments.
They were organised by a Westfield consultant, Ken Hooper, a former journalist and press secretary to Nick Greiner when he was NSW Liberal premier. Documents show Hooper used untraceable identification cards in mobile phones, created false identities to run sham pressure groups, misled local newspapers and put pressure on local politicians.
For 14 months, Hooper denied he was working for anyone else and evaded the witness box through an expensive and complex series of constitutional challenges to the power of the Federal Court. He even threatened to take the matter to the High Court.
"We have been guilty of a lack of transparency and openness and that is a matter of great regret and embarrassment to the company," Lowy said later. In 2004 Westfield paid out $3.5 million to settle a legal claim arising out of the campaigns.
Years earlier, Lowy interests saved a reported $25 million when his family settled a long-running dispute with the ATO. The dispute involved two amounts of $42.8 million and $5 million received by a Lowy family company, Cordera, in January 1987 and November 1988. Cordera is the primary vehicle for the family's shareholding in Westfield Holdings. The settlement caused tension among ATO staff and two investigators reportedly took stress leave after the decision.
Caption:
SEVEN PHOTOS: Global playing field... Left: Frank Lowy with Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed bin Hammam in March 2005. Centre: John Saunders, Andrew Lederer and Frank Lowy, in November 1987. Bottom: The press conference in August 2006 where FFA chief executive John O'Neill (centre) announced his resignation. Photo: Grant Turner Photo: Wade Laube Family firm... Clockwise from top left: A young Frank Lowy; brother John, mother Ilona, sister Edith and Frank outside their flat in Darling Point; Frank, 23, and Shirley, 19, on their wedding day in 1954; Frank and Shirley Lowy at Redleaf Pool, Sydney, with eldest son David. Photo: courtesy of Frank Lowy x 4 Photographs by James Cant Grooming by Sasha Nilsson
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Location: Tascott, Central Coast
| | Re: Lowy interview in AFR
« Reply #2 on Jun 29, 2007, 4:05pm » | |
footballer
sport scienctist
sale of the century
now writing for the financial review
is there nothing this man cannot do?
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_______________________________________
"You only sing when you're fishing, sing when you're fishing"
Central Coast Mariners, since 2004 |
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Rubbernose
Socceroo/Matilda
member is offline
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 947
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pippinu
New Recruit
member is offline
![[avatar]](http://mm.afl.com.au/afl_archive/cp2/c2/webi/article/287665cl.jpg)
All the way from Barkly St
Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 12
| | Re: Frank Lowy story in AFR
« Reply #4 on Jun 29, 2007, 11:56pm » | |
thanks for putting this article up
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pippinu
La granni V e u palluni pari sunnu! |
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