Frank Lowy

"They were pioneers in the west, doing much the same as Frank Lowy had been doing with his Westfield group in the eastern states, which in turn was an adaptation of an American template. Tenants paid either a base rent or one calculated on turnover, whichever was greater. They also paid the outgoings such as maintenance, rates, taxes, management and insurance. If tenants thrived, so did the centre owners. Only a sustained financial downturn that squeezed daily household spending — what Stokes calls a ‘major’ in business shorthand — could hurt them badly."

"On his way up, Gonski would become a corporate confidant of Kerry Packer, Rupert Murdoch and Frank Lowy, among others. But only one of his tycoon patrons ever personally picked him up from the airport, and that was Kerry Stokes. It was the late 1970s, soon after they’d met, and Gonski had been asked to Perth to work on a project he has forgotten but which was almost certainly the controversial CPI buy-back. What he has never forgotten is the sight of Stokes waiting for him in a blue Rolls-Royce convertible, as casually and quietly as if Gonski were family. ‘That never happens,’ says Gonski of the gesture. Tycoons will spend money on good help, but rarely their own time. Yet Stokes goes out of his way to include relative strangers, to make them feel wanted and ‘on the team’. Some can’t help thinking he means it."