Mingers dig out $460-m fortune in Packer’s land

APRIL 1: While media tycoon Kerry Packer was making waves in India, real action was happening back home: In his backyard to be more precis...

APRIL 1: While media tycoon Kerry Packer was making waves in India, real action was happening back home: In his backyard to be more precise, where a mining company found rubies worth $460 million on his NSW property. And Packer, who had bought 10 per cent stake in this company only five months ago, is entitled to half the rubies, which translates to $230 million.

Interestingly, this is almost equal to the $238 million that he has invested to pick up 10 per cent equity in HFCL Ltd. earlier in March.

According to the Sydney-based The Daily Telegraph, which reported the discovery, Packer had invested only $5.3 million to buy a stake in the mining company called Cluff Resources Pacific.

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Cluff, which was searching for rubies and sapphires on Packer’s Hunter Valley property, had earlier found 4 million carats of rubies, valued at $100 a carat. On Tuesday, (the same day when Packer landed in India), Cluff discovered an extra stash of 600,000 carats of rubies from a previously unknown deposit. It now plans to mine more rubies, and sell them to get a true valuation of their market value.

Packer, who is the richest man in Australia, got interested in Cluff in October. And Packer’s midas touch seems to have already turned the company’s stock price to gold.

According to reports which appeared in The Australian, another leading newspaper of Australia, “Share market punters — besotted with the Packer name — swooped on junior gem explorer Cluff Resources Pacific after news broke that more gems had been discovered on Packer’s property.”

More than 90 million of Cluff’s shares were bought and sold, making it the most heavily traded stock on the Australian Stock Exchange. The stock has soared more than 50 per cent in value in the past two days, add media reports.

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Packer has an uncanny knack of making money out of nothing at all. And the discovery of rubies from his properties has proved this yet again. An earlier instance of this magic touch was seen in 1987, when Packer overpriced two of his Channel Nine stations and sold them to businessman Alan Bond for $1 billion, only to buy them back three years later for $250 million, when Bond was facing financial trouble.

Meanwhile, Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings Ltd (CPH) has formed two joint ventures with HFCL, for software products and e-commerce activities.

CPH, which has assets worth $10 billion, own the popular Channel Nine television network and the largest magazine business in Australia. The company also has major investments in mobile, telephony, entertainment, and e-commerce.

An alliance with Channel Nine, which has recently been awarded with a two-year production contract by Doordarshan for international cricket played in the country, will provide HFCL with the opportunity to enter the entertainment content and access business. HFCL also plans to launch Internet services in a big way in the future.