Australian media mogul who died was big time gambler

[Grant]

Good article..

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SYDNEY, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Billionaire Kerry Packer stood alone as Australia's richest man, but shared his countrymen's two great passions -- sport and gambling.

Owner of Australia's top rating television network and a magazine empire, Packer, whose wealth has been estimated at A$6.9 billion (2.9 billion pounds), was a big figure in both business and real life.

"He is the roughest, toughest as well as the most astute and picturesque businessmen I have ever met," Lord Conrad Black once said of Packer.

At a height of 1.9 metres (6ft 2in), Packer's bulky physique helped make him one of Australia's most recognisable and feared public figures.

But he was dogged by health problems, including most recently a kidney transplant.

Packer suffered a heart attack in 1990 while playing polo in Sydney. Declared clinically dead for eight minutes, he was revived by electric shock treatment and was back in the saddle five weeks later.

"The good news is there's no devil. The bad news is there's no heaven. There's nothing," Packer said after the incident.

Packer's love of gambling cost him millions at casinos and racetracks around the world and stories about his gambling sprees increased the mystique of an intensely private man.

"I don't take risks with the company, I take risks which are for my recreation, which sometimes work out and sometimes don't," Packer told the Australian newspaper in 2000 after denying reports he lost US$20 million in a Las Vegas gambling spree.

But it was his involvement in the previously staid world of cricket which brought Packer to international attention in 1977.

In a feud with the game's establishment over the television rights to screen test matches, Packer secretly recruited the cream of international cricketers for sponsored matches broadcast on his Australian television network.

The sight of teams playing at night under floodlights and wearing coloured uniforms in Packer's World Series of Cricket horrified the sport's authorities in England, but overwhelming public support forced them to accommodate the new order.

Born in Sydney on December 17, 1937, and educated at one of the city's top private boarding schools, Packer learnt much of his business and media acumen from his media tycoon father.

On Sir Frank Packer's death in 1974, Packer took over the family media business Consolidated Press Holdings. In 1994 he merged Consolidated Press and his network television holdings to form a listed company, Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd.

Combining his love of gambling with business, in March 1994 Packer became a partner in Melbourne's Crown Casino. His media company's gaming arm now makes up about half of Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd's earnings.

Packer and his wife, Roslyn, were married in 1963. They have one daughter, Gretel, and a son James.

Continuing the family tradition, Packer has delegated increasingly to James who took over as managing director of PBL in 1996 and then promoted to executive chairman.

Kerry Packer has a reputation for ruthlessness -- some have compared his smile to that of a crocodile just before it crushes its victim.

His greatest business coup came in 1990 when he won back Channel Nine from failed entrepreneur Alan Bond without spending a cent. Set up by his father in 1956 as Australia's first television station, Channel Nine was sold to Bond for $A1.0 billion in 1987.

When Bond's fortunes tumbled in the stockmarket crash later that year he could not make a final payment to Packer, who was then able to convert A$200 million of preference shares into a controlling stake.

Source: Reuters

[Grant]

Wow $20 million :shock: