Boom-Sensing Before the Crowd

“He had not, for the most part, built businesses from the ground up. He was not a creator of new enterprises. Rather, he had done deals, cultivated relationships, capitalised on booms and aggregated money-earning assets. His great talent was that he could see ways of structuring a deal or a business enterprise that looked obvious in hindsight, yet which nobody had hit on before. He sensed a boom well before others. He had weaknesses, both in capacity and in emotions. Particularly, there was a lack where most of us have a sense of identity and place. He was a hoarder, a gatherer around himself of objects. He liked acquisition. Yet he also had an ability to reconfigure, and to move on when self- or business interest required. He was unlike Murdoch and Packer in that, when it came to business, he was mostly unsentimental. He saved sentiment for the art collection. Which is not to say he was unemotional. There was a chip on his shoulder, an abiding sense, despite his wealth and power, of being hard done by, and a determination to take it up to the establishment. But with all that he was good fun – laconic and outwardly even tempered. His employees liked him, and most were steadfastly loyal and well looked after. He was a dealer, rather than a manager, but he made up for any lack by the quality of the people he hired as his closest assistants, and the manner in which he kept them close.”

“In 1972 Stokes was travelling overseas to seek investment. Soon the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation was involved as a shareholder and provider of mortgage finance, and a group of investors from Bermuda were represented on the board. So began a pattern in Stokes’ business career: shuffling assets between public companies he controlled and his private companies, always with the result that he increased his personal wealth. Those who knew them at the time say that Stokes and Bendat were on a learning curve. ‘It would be, “Oh, can we do this?” They didn’t really have a strong sense of the rules, but they both learned fast.’ The 1972 CPI report shows that the board approved the purchase of Dianella Plaza from a Bendat and Stokes company. ‘The Chairman, Mr Bendat, and the Managing Director, Mr Stokes of CPI, are also directors of the vendor company, and because of the situation, both abstained from voting in the Board’s decision to acquire this project.’”