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ALAN KOHLER: One in four Australians will soon be of retirement age and providing them with a place to live is becoming good business. That's certainly what two of Australia's best-known business identities, Robert de Crespigny and Ron Walker, have decided - buying into one of the country's aged care developers, Primelife. Trouble is, someone else got there first - Ted Sent. He may not be as well known, but he's just as tough. Greg Hoy reports.
GREG HOY: What warning would you give to Mr Walker and de Crespigny?
DOREEN NYMAN: Do your research, take extreme care and know who you're dealing with.
CLINTON CASEY, RETIREMENT SERVICES AUSTRALIA: The world's their oyster within the industry we sit.
JIM HAZEL, VILLAGE CARE LIMITED: We have three emperors in the boardroom - I wouldn't expect there to be three in two years time.
GREG HOY: The highly talked about and recent commercial marriage of three multi-millionaires. Two respected and high profile - Robert de Crespigny and Ron Walker - to one highly controversial - Ted Sent - who is hounded by litigation and haunted by allegations from former business associates - one of many professionals who was drawn to invest in a company of Mr Sent's - the late professor and surgeon Jacob Nyman who wrote these memoirs just before he died in 1987. DIARY EXCERPTS OF PROFESSOR JACOB NYMAN, READ BY
DOREEN NYMAN: It is still amazing to recollect with how much ease and charisma Ted Sent led these professional colleagues and myself up the garden path. This is a recurring theme in his dealings with people. I have seen him with top international bankers and how he was able to relate to and influence them.
GREG HOY: The new partnership will decide who can control the cash-strapped $1.6 billion aged care corporation Primelife and explain why Mr Walker and de Crespigny would want to.
CLINTON CASEY: What they've identified is a great opportunity. You've got one in eight people in Australia that are of retirement age and over the next 35 years that's going to be one in four, so it's going to have a dramatic increase. Secondly, with aged care you've got 170,000 Australians today in aged care and over that same period of time that's going to increase to 500,000. We're going to be about 58,000 beds short in the Australian marketplace.
JIM HAZEL: In my view there will be a listed aged care company or two in the top 200 companies in Australia. Primelife can clearly be one of those.
GREG HOY: What's been the perception about Primelife in the industry?
CLINTON CASEY: A perception that it's been a fairly closed shop. No-one's quite been able to get their head around where Primelife's been at and there's a concern within the industry because of the size of that company - If they were to have some sought of an issue, of course it would reflect on the whole industry because they're the biggest competitor in the marketplace. So anything they do would have had a repercussion and that's why I think to identify some of the weaknesses and take the changes that they've taken is only going to strengthen that business and therefore strengthen the whole industry.
GREG HOY: Enter Robert Champion De Crespigny AC, Companion of the Order of Australia, founder of Normandy Mining, which he sold last year, reportedly emerging with $160 million. The new chairman of Primelife has not spoken since the extraordinary meeting.
ROBERT CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY, CHAIRMAN PRIMELIFE: Obviously from time to time, in the short term, there've been challenges, but we see with proper management, the financial controls, that this can be a wonderful company. It's got a great brand and it's got enormous acceptance in the marketplace.
GREG HOY: To the rescue - a $10.8 million loan and share placement deal could, if the marriage lasts, deliver 20 per cent of Primelife to Mr de Crespigny and his recent investment partner, Ron Walker AC, OBE, Primelife's new deputy chairman. The involvement of the pair was enough to see the share price surge.
CLINTON CASEY: It's been outstanding for them. They bought in at a bit over $1.50 and it's now north of $2.60, so I think they've done very well.
JIM HAZEL: Not only for the new entrants, but the major beneficiary would be the major shareholder in Primelife, which is Ted Sent, who's probably $15 million ahead at this stage on paper.
GREG HOY: But these knights of business establishment are now joined in solemn matrimony to the founder of Primelife - one of Australia's most notorious entrepreneurs - Eduard Christiaan Sent. Who remains director, managing director, CEO and the largest shareholder of Primelife by far, with around 30 per cent of the company. Though he would not be interviewed by Inside Business, he spoke briefly as he left the extraordinary general meeting.
TED SENT, CEO PRIMELIFE: I believe so much in the company that I'll sacrifice almost anything to want to make it the greatest and the best?
GREG HOY: Including sacrificing your own job, potentially?
TED SENT: Well, if I'm not suitable then I will be sacrificed. I mean I have a contract and I sincerely hope to be able to live that contract out in good stead and I sincerely hope that the board agrees with me.
GREG HOY: How long's your contract run for?
TED SENT: It still runs for another five years.
GREG HOY: But even before the wedding the new grooms were known to have been courting new and solid management. He will not be easily moved. Ted Sent has those who admire what he's accomplished.
JIM HAZEL: An incredibly hard working-person, has incredible enthusiasm and has made things happen. You don't build a company from nothing to a market cap of $130 million by sitting on you bum and that's what he's done, so you've got to say "all credit to the man."
DIARY EXCERPTS OF PROFESSOR JACOB NYMAN, READ BY DOREEN NYMAN: Ruthless in pursuit of aims - as I subsequently found and discovered - ruthless, merciless.
GREG HOY: Last year $4.8 million in shareholders money was spent in legal fees. Many commercial disputes are yet to be resolved. Various investigations, court appearances and failures have followed his career path. A former bankrupt with no fewer than 43 companies of which he's been a director either deregistered, placed in administration or receivership. Dealing in anything from cars, aircraft, boats, usually tax schemes which attracted the late renal transplant surgeon Professor Nyman.
DIARY EXCERPTS OF PROFESSOR JACOB NYMAN, READ BY DOREEN NYMAN: His whole attitude was based on the premise that I could trust him and that, after all, we were brothers.
GREG HOY: Eventually Mr Sent moved on to retirement villages. Tax minimisation joint ventures, which together with public listing, gave Primelife the market scale it has today.
JIM HAZEL: Primelife developed some quite aggressive tax-based product that involved fairly heavily-geared tax deduction and they were very successful and a lot of the development that they have on their books at the moment arose out of investment syndicates.
GREG HOY: Tax schemes are now being re-examined by the ATO, but The secret of Primelife's marketing success has been to cash in on surging demand for upmarket retirement living on one hand and - if such accommodation can't be filled - to offer Government-assisted nursing care accommodation on the other, with around 870 bed licences granted by the Commonwealth Department of Aged Care, regardless of Mr Sent's business history.
ROBERT CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY: They were transactions the company had to enter into to continue to build the company.
GREG HOY: He will not be drawn to comment on Ted Sent, but the new chairman has said the company will seek more conventional capital from institutions, easing widespread concern in the industry Primelife might fall over in a cash crisis - impacting on the whole sector.
ROBERT CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY: We want to go and review the whole of the company - which is, I think, what shareholders want - and the certainly the investment community won't to do a review.
GREG HOY: Question is, what will the newcomers find in the process? How will they lay to rest the raw grievances of Primelife's litigious past and distance themselves from endless allegations against the company's founder and largest shareholder?
DIARY EXCERPTS OF PROFESSOR JACOB NYMAN, READ BY DOREEN NYMAN: How does one reconcile this? There is no reconciliation. There is only Ted Sent.
GREG HOY: And the biggest bet in the industry is that unless his latest investment partners cut and run - Mr Sent may just be in for the biggest payout of his infamous career.
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