ACE

"‘Shock and awe’ is how one commentator described the announcement made by the Seven Network in February 2010.16 In theory the board of the company had, ever since the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts deal, been searching the world for good investments. Instead, much of the money had been used to buy back shares in the company itself, which had increased Stokes’ control. More had been spent on Consolidated Media Holdings and West Australian Newspapers. Now, the company announced, it had decided that the best way to spend its cash was to buy WesTrac from Stokes’ private company, ACE. Under the deal the Seven Network would pay $1 billion in shares for WesTrac, and take on the company’s $1 billion in debt, using $600 million of the remaining cash in the company to pay it down. The new merged company, Seven Group Holdings, would own the Seven Media Group with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. It would be a conglomerate, bearing the Seven name but with little to do with the original business. Stokes would own 68 per cent of it. Once again, the equity moved closer to Stokes, and the debt – accrued by WesTrac during its fast expansion in New South Wales and China – further away. One investment adviser service described the situation pithily. ‘So after three years of searching high and low, the directors [of the Seven Network] have come to the conclusion that the very best investment opportunity is the acquisition of WesTrac.’ Under the heading ‘Sarcastic Remark Warning’, the service’s newsletter said, ‘The new combined media investment and heavy earthmoving company will be renamed Seven Group Holdings Limited, presumably a reference to the seven seas sailed by independent directors in their search for investment opportunities before stumbling onto the perfect one in their boss’s backyard.’"

"Given the odour surrounding the name of Alan Bond, it isn’t surprising that when Bond took over Bell Group, and with it the Caterpillar dealership, the parent company in the United States announced that it would withdraw the franchise. Moving with characteristic ruthlessness, Caterpillar gave Bond only three months’ notice to come to an agreement with the newly anointed dealer: a US company, Morgan Equipment. The federal government was far from pleased. The treasurer, Paul Keating, issued a statement saying that the replacement of an Australian-owned with a foreign-owned company was ‘inconsistent with foreign investment guidelines’.20 Meanwhile, the Bell Group managing director, David Aspinall, described Caterpillar’s actions as ‘tantamount to rape’, and Bond announced his intention to challenge the validity of the termination notice in the Victorian Supreme Court.21 Stokes was at the time the majority owner and a director of a public company called Austrim, which was associated with the Nylex Group – manufacturers of clothes, fabrics, hoses and that Australian iconic brand, the Esky. While Morgan Equipment and Bond scrapped over the price for the dealership, Stokes and his fellow director and svengali Ken Parker manoeuvred for position. When the dust settled over the fight between Morgan Equipment and Bond, Austrim emerged owning 30 per cent of the franchise, with Morgan owning the other 70 per cent. Then, in the final weeks of the greedy decade it was announced that Austrim would sell its 30 per cent share in the dealership to Stokes’ ACE. Three weeks later, on 16 January 1990, the news was released that Stokes had bought the lot. He had paid Morgan Equipment’s owner Harold Morgan $50 million for the whole company, including the Caterpillar dealership. The Caterpillar head office clearly smiled on the deal: there was no suggestion of their revisiting the ownership of the franchise. Stokes smoothly slipped in."

"At the same time, he was investing in Pacific Film Laboratories, which was giving Kodak a run for market dominance by employing what was then the latest computer-assisted processing technology, as well as giving away free film to those who took photos there for processing. In 1982, he made a takeover offer for the company. This, too, became owned by ACE, and after the takeover Stokes changed the board so it had largely common membership with Australian Capital Television. Stokes took to referring to the different interests ACE held as ‘partners’, with the relationship between them and ACE ‘not that of control but rather cooperation’. He clearly saw all kinds of potential for collaboration across media and photography. Pacific Film, however, did not last as a Stokes investment. In 1985, he sold out to Kodak, ahead of the dominance of the domestic digital camera, the minilabs for processing on each street corner, and all the changes that transformed photography forever. ‘I lost a fortune,’ he told The Bulletin in 1991.9"