David Coe, the former Rich Lister and chairman of the collapsed Allco Finance Group, has died from a heart attack during a ski trip in Aspen, Colorado.
Coe was 58 and died while on his annual holiday with his wife, Michelle, according to a report in The Australian Financial Review.
He has three children, Christopher, Robert and Matthew.
Coe helped build Allco into one of Australia’s largest structured finance firms until the company collapsed under $1.1 billion of debt in 2008 in one of Australia’s biggest corporate failures.
At the top of the bull market in 2006, the finance giant was worth a staggering $5 billion and founders and major shareholders Coe and John Kinghorn were market darlings.
In its most daring move, Allco announced it would invest $300 million in the private equity bid for Qantas.
However, following Allco’s receivership, Coe turned his attention to philanthropy as a donor to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and was also on the board of the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation.
He started his career at law firm King and Wood Mallesons (formerly Mallesons Stephen Jaques). The firm’s global managing partner, Stuart Fuller, told SmartCompany his thoughts were with Coe’s family.
“David was a partner of the firm in the mid-1980s and was well known to a number of our partners and alumni as a colleague and friend, as well as the founder of Allco,” he says.
“He will be remembered for his wide-ranging business activities and for his many philanthropic contributions.”
Cara Waters is the editor of SmartCompany. Cara was previously a senior reporter at the Financial Times website FT Adviser in London and has also worked for The Sunday Times.
