Page 165 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 16 - GET THE LION ON THE LINE AND LET US TRACK YOU DOWN A BETTER DEAL
insurance business started to decline with it. Then Walton’s started a wholesale program of closing the stores. This was the end of the mass marketing retail business model which Terry De Souza (Managing Director of Stronghold) had built, emulating the Sears Roebuck model in the USA.
So, we had to do something. Terry had retired in June 1986 and we sent Alan Mason up from Melbourne to run Stronghold.
Kerry Packer and “Get The Lion on the Line”
At the time Tony Greig who, as I mentioned earlier, I knew his Father well from my days in P. E. had been given the keys to an insurance broking outfit by Kerry Packer. This was the future that Kerry had promised Tony when World Series Cricket came to an end. So, Tony and his father Sandy and his mother Joyce found themselves running a general and life insurance broking outfit in North Sydney, which Tony renamed the Lion. Hence the phrase “Get the Lion on the Line and Let Us Track You Down a Better Deal”. Lion was a well-known name because of the heavy advertising but was not really making much headway as it struggled to keep underwriters or achieve competitive prices.
Tony and I came to a deal to merge Stronghold and Lion Insurance Brokers and rename Stronghold - Lion Insurance Company. We kept the broking company too, which was very useful for the business we didn’t want to underwrite ourselves. We also kept Lion’s large Life multi- agency.
Well do I remember the negotiations with Kerry Packer, who had a reputation for being a very fierce and ruthless businessman, and not without reason. Kerry didn’t beat about the bush, he made a decision and then he expected you to deliver. If you didn’t deliver you would be put in front of the firing squad.
I remember the first day we went to Consolidated Press’s offices in Park Street in Sydney. We got out of the lift and the foyer was
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