$500m feeding frenzy as empire implodes
The $500m collapse of a hospitality giant is set to spark a feeding frenzy among Australia’s richest pub barons.
The $500m collapse of a hospitality giant is set to spark a feeding frenzy among Australia’s richest pub barons.
The collapse of Jon Adgemis’ Public Hospitality Group (PHG), has happened slowly, then suddenly with the former KPMG partner now facing the break up of his beloved empire.
The Sunday Telegraph reports PHG has a whopping $500m in debts.
A Notice of Application for Winding up Order has been lodged with ASIC.
Adgemis’ empire included 20 pubs, with the opportunity for some savvy buyers to ‘pick them up on the cheap’.
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Jon Adgemis at Oxford House in Paddington. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift
The pubs and other ventures in that empire that have been put up for sale include boutique hotel Oxford House in Sydney’s Paddington, The Norfolk in Redfern, Camelia Grove Hotel in Alexandria, Darlinghurst’s Exchange Hotel, The Strand Hotel in the CBD, The Oxford Tavern in Petersham, the Exhange Hotel in Balmain and the Melbourne’s Clifton Hotel and St George.
According to reports, staff are still owed $6.7m that needs to be paid by July 31. And jobs could be at risk, depending on how the hospitality venues are carved up and sold.
Some of these venues have already been snapped up by hospitality giants such as the Solotel Group, run by industry veteran Bruce Solomon, whose other venues include the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills and the Golden Sheaf in Double Bay.
Given the huge interest from cashed up pub barons in adding to their asset base, the sell-off of PHG, could see Aussie pub barons enter another scrap.
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Noahs Backpackers could be up for grabs.
That could lead to a showdown of sorts between the likes of pub tsars Arthur Laundy and Justin Hemmes over the ruins of Adgemis’ empire.
Scott Didier, Group CEO of construction firm Johns Lyng Group, could be another interested party after he recently expanding his empire with the $140m headline grabbing buy of the Beach Hotel in Byron Bay.
It was the second highest price ever paid for an Aussie pub, behind The Crossroads Hotel in Casula in Sydney’s southwest which changed hands for $160m in 2022.
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Pictured at one of his pubs, The Bell’s Hotel at Woolloomooloo in Sydney is Arthur Laundy. Picture: Richard Dobson
The Crossroads was purchased by former Sydney Lord Mayor and philanthropist Nelson Meers, could he also been interested in an offload from PHG?
One of the more interesting assets in PHG’s empire is the old Town Hall hotel in Balmain, which was an inner-city icon before being turned into a gym and is now looking for a new existence.
Adgemis is not alone, with some experts are warning the increasing cost of doing business is driving more publicans and owners to call time on their venues.
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Madeline Holtznagel and Justin Hemmes at a Melbourne Cup lunch at Ivy Pool Club in Sydney. Picture: Richard Dobson
Adgemis was also working on big build projects including 19-room boutique hotel the Flinders in Darlinghurst, and one on the site of the former Noah’s Bondi backpackers on Campbell Parade, Bondi Beach. That was bought for $68m by Adgemis in 2022 and is now looks likely to be sold off to creditors.
Adgemis has also had to move out of the waterside Bang & Olufsen House, a $130m+ mansion in Australia’s most expensive suburb – Point Piper.
It was so named because Elton John thought it looked like a stereo when he spotted it while sailing on Sydney Harbour and considered buying it as an Aussie pad.
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Town Hall Hotel in Balmain could be revived as a hospitality venue.
