Besieged Gold Coast property developer Craig Gore has admitted that the bulk of his fortune, once valued at $180 million, is gone.
The admission came after listed Gold Coast property and finance company City Pacific put a fourth Gore company, called Sickle Avenue, into receivership late last week.
City Pacific placed three Gore companies -Atkinson Gore Group, Atkinson Gore Agricultural, and AGG Treetops – into receivership in February after the companies defaulted on loans of $145 million.
City Pacific claims Sickle Avenue owes $38 million. Mark Korda and John Park of insolvency firm KordaMentha are acting as receivers for all four companies.
City Pacific’s moves against Gore have triggered a bitter dispute between Gore and City Pacific, with Gore launching a $300 million lawsuit against City Pacific in the Queensland Supreme Court claiming the listed company had engaged in “misleading and deceptive conduct”.
Gore has also claimed that he and British business partner Michael Ashcroft had offered to pay his debt to City Pacific, but the company had refuted this and denied the allegations contained in Gore’s lawsuit.
But the battle appears to have taken a toll on Gore, who was valued at $180 million in 2007 by BRW magazine.
“There’s not a lot left,” Gore told The Australian newspaper.
Gore blamed his woes on City Pacific and said he was a victim of the Australian tendency to cut down successful people. “I’m disappointed it’s come to this. It didn’t need to.
“The funniest thing about that is that the higher you climb, the higher the calibre of the person who wants to bring you down for their own satisfaction.”
Gore is no stranger to the highs and lows of business. His father Mike Gore fled to Canada in the late 1980s after the collapse of his property empire, and Craig Gore was eventually made bankrupt by receivers who believed Mike Gore might have given some money to his son.
He started his comeback in the 1990s by selling cans of soft drink on the beach, and eventually built a property and financial services business that thrived during the Queensland economic boom early this decade.
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James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
