Page 164 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story
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CHAPTER 16 - GET THE LION ON THE LINE AND LET US TRACK YOU DOWN A BETTER DEAL
only enjoying 10%. What he failed to realise, is that he was paying nothing to run the insurance operation in the store and Norwich was meeting all the costs so his 10% was really a fair remuneration.
To cut it short, he eventually returned here most indignant that Norwich would not give him anything. He visited my office and said he wouldn’t deal with them anymore; but he would deal with me as I was a very considerate person and he had had only good dealings with me. I must admit I only met him on a few occasions and those occasions were dinners where the wine was flowing.
Anyway, he didn’t get much joy out of me, but he said he thought I was a great fellow.
Alan Bond left and he phoned me from his car on the way back to the airport and said to me “could I arrange for Norwich to lend him $10m and he would pay them interest of 19%” which was way above any commercial rate of interest available then, but he did not have any collateral. When I told him it was not on, he then slammed down the telephone and that’s the last I heard from him; although he did nothing and we continued to do his insurances.
Some time later I happened to be around Kerry Packer’s office when he was doing the deal with Alan Bond to sell Channel 9 and I remember him telling his negotiator that he should lock Bond
Terry c. Desouza, M.A., A.C.I.I., General Manager
in a room and get as much cash as he could because he believed he would buy it back for at least 50% of what he had paid. This of course did transpire at the end of the day. I have seen the short TV program on Kerry Packer and World Series cricket and the program on the House of Bond. I must say I thought there were extremely accurate.
Anyway, the Walton’s Bond retail empire of department stores started to get into trading difficulties and needless to say Stronghold’s
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