Wine fraud is the scourge of everyone who loves a great drop – dastardly scammers putting top-shelf labels on bottom-shelf wine is the sort of crime that makes one reconsider capital punishment. Perhaps the best known case of wine fraud in the world involves US billionaire William Koch, who has launched numerous legal actions over claims he was sold counterfeit wine that was supposed to have come from the cellar of US president Thomas Jefferson. The affair has been turned into a book called The Billionaire’s Vinegar.
This year saw what is believed to be the biggest price ever paid for a piece of art, when hedge fund manager Leon Black paid almost $US120 million for Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. Of course, most of us only hear about the big sales – art markets are notoriously fickle and have taken something of a beating since the GFC. Auction house Sotheby’s recently reported a 33% drop in second quarter profits on lower art auction results. In Australia, Sotheby’s recent Important Australian and International Art sale saw only 68% of the 66 artworks sold, with the amount raised well below pre-auction estimates.
Polo is the iconic sport of the rich – partly because it is so expensive. Failed Gold Coast millionaire Michael King – the co-founder of property and financial services group MFS – sunk $20 million into a huge polo complex on the Coast, grandly called Elysian Fields. It all had to be sold off when King’s empire collapsed, but guess who bought a slice? Nathan Tinkler.
Comedian Mel Brooks based the plot of his famous film The Producers around the idea that theatre productions ALWAYS lost money. So it proved for Gina Rinehart, who was last year revealed to have lost $2.3 million after Xanadu the Musical collapsed just weeks into its Melbourne run. Tough crowd, big losses.
Running a pub or restaurant sounds like so much fun. But as anyone in the hospitality game will tell you, it’s hard work, with low margins, high costs, long hours and millions of things that can go wrong. Mark Alexander-Erber – known as Pub Boy – and Rick Munday were two pub owners who stormed on to the Young Rich List at the height of a pub boom that occurred around 2006. But when the economy turned and cashflow dried up, receivers were soon calling last drinks on their large debt piles.
James Thomson is a former editor of BRW’s Rich 200 and the publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany.
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.
