Jodee Rich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jodee Rich founded micro-computer software and hardware distributor in Australia and South East Asia - Imagineering Ltd - in 1980.
Rich's family sold 40 per cent of the equity and went public in 1985. Imagineering and its sister company Tech Pacific were sold to First Pacific in 1990.
From 1990 to 1995, Rich attended Sydney University studying biochemistry and attended Wharton Business School, as well as being a commercial flying instructor.
He formed (with James Packer as a shareholder) a service provider of GSM mobile and long distance calls - One.Tel - in Australia in 1995.
One.Tel expanded its operations overseas in 1998. In 1999, Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting and News Corporation made a $600 million investment in the business as it committed to building Australia's fourth mobile network.
The company acquired a GSM operation for $500 million in 2000.
One.Tel Australia was placed in administration in May 2001, after PBL and News Corporation withdraw their earlier stated support for an underwritten rights issue. One.Tel UK was sold to British Gas for $200 million and is still trading with more than 1 million customers.
Rich has been involved in litigation with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission since December, 2001, while a Special Purpose Liquidator is currently investigating the circumstances of the cancelled rights issue.
Jodee Rich was a co-founder of the company One.Tel that collapsed in mid 2001. Rich entered into and then cancelled an agreement to provide a proportion of the family wealth to his wife Maxine Brenner, a law lecturer at the University of New South Wales, under the Australian Family Law Act. At the time of the One. Tel collapse, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) valued Rich's assets at approximately $40 million.
The cancelled 31 May 2001 agreement involved the transfer of $6 million family home to his wife, along with an agreement to pay off the $3.7 million mortgage. She was also to be given a majority share in his Darling Point mansion, purchased by Rich in May 1999 for $14 million. Almost all of Rich's other assets, including a $4 million property in the Whitsundays, a Cessna Citation jet, a Eurocopter Jet helicopter, a Porsche, furniture, paintings and an offshore powerboat were also to be transferred to Maxine. An amount of $2 million was set aside in the Jodee Rich Family Trust to take care of the "education, maintenance and advancement in life" of Maxine and Jodee's children.
The Darling point mansion, known as Craigend, was very quickly on-sold to Bruce Davey, the manager of Australian actor Mel Gibson. The liquidator of One. Tel is running an action against Rich.
[edit] Further reading
Paul Barry, Rich Kids, Bantam Books, 2002, ISBN 1-86325-338-6
