CHAPTER TWELVE
ANGUS & ROBERTSON

. . . media people are more interesting. They meet more people and they are entertaining. For party purposes that’s quite useful. Secondly they’re very powerful people . . . Perhaps I cultivate media people in the same way as a lot of businesspeople cultivate politicians.

Gordon Barton

Angus & Robertson had started as a single bookstore selling second-hand books in Sydney in 1884. Four years later it began publishing Australian authors and by 1970 it was the nation’s oldest, most prestigious bookseller and publishing house—to many it remained the most influential force in Australian books.

The publishing arm was best known for its fiction. It held Frank Clune, Ion Idriess, Thomas Keneally and Ivan Southall in its stable, most Australian children’s classics of the time (Dorothy Wall, May Gibbs, Norman Lindsay) and a roll-call of luminary Australian poets (Lawson, Paterson, C.J. Dennis, Hope, Slessor and Wright). But its publishing list went far beyond fiction. Educational texts had become an important part of its business.

A battle to control the organisation had raged through the 1960s with attacks from both Frank Packer and ambitious New Zealand-born businessman Walter Burns. By the late 1960s, Angus & Robertson Publishing was losing a lot of money and feeling the pressure of new competitors: Lloyd O’Neil and Rigby in Australiana; AH & AW Reed in natural science; and UQP, Cassell and others with a new generation of Australian poets and fiction writers. By 1970, its three core businesses— printing, retail bookselling and publishing—were again a takeover target.

The Angus & Robertson board lacked a CEO. Instead it had three key executive directors: Don Hardy, a gruff, almost deaf fellow running retail; George Ferguson in charge of publishing; and Aubrey Cousins heading the Halstead printing business. Each would apply to the non-executive board members every month for the funds to keep their divisions operating. The board’s chair was Allen Allen & Hemsley doyen Sir Norman Cowper—an icon of Australian law sitting in what was to many in the 1960s the intellectual heart of Australia. Because the UK-based publisher William Collins had accumulated a large parcel of shares, Ken Wilder, Collins’ Australian managing director, also sat on the Angus & Robertson board with a watching brief.

With the rise of offset printing and overseas competition, printing could now be done far more cheaply in Asia and competitors were making the most of these savings. This was making it tough for Angus &Robertson’s poorly equipped Halstead printing business.

Before joining Tjuringa early in 1970 as ‘an investment analyst, a fix-up person’, Gordon McCarthy had been an audit manager at Coopers, where Collins UK had been his client. Given Collins had such a large sum tied up in Angus & Robertson shares, in 1968 it had asked McCarthy to assess the value of the company. No doubt this influenced Barton to hire McCarthy. It also meant that when, in early February 1970, Collins senior UK director Ian Chapman jetted into Sydney to discuss with potential bidders terms for the sale of its large block of Angus & Robertson shares, Tjuringa had already done its homework.

It was impossible to know exactly who came and went from the Collins director’s suite at the Menzies Hotel. Even an oil exploration company was interested in the huge parcel of shares. Apart from seeking the highest bidder, Collins had always promised to try to sell to an Australian organisation committed to investing in the publishing and bookselling operations rather than stripping their assets. It also wanted cash.

Potential buyers began valuing Angus & Robertson properties, allowing for a write-down of stocks and fittings, assessing the possibilities for selling assets and reorganising the publishing and bookselling businesses. Most were overseas-based—the UK’s News International and US-based Encyclopaedia Britannica and CBS amongst them. However, there was a very strong feeling amongst the Australian public that the company should stay in Australian hands.

At the time Angus & Robertson owned Robertson & Mullens, a major Melbourne bookseller and publisher, the three-storey Swains building in Sydney’s Pitt Street, as well as retail shops—largely as a result of a bunch of takeovers in six major cities—all of which had kept their own names. The only Angus & Robertson branded stores were 89 Castlereagh Street in Sydney and one in Armidale in country New South Wales. McCarthy had estimated the business to be worth about $7 million—most of which was tied up in its property assets, although its freehold properties looked to be undervalued by $1.8 million while shop fittings and stocks were probably overvalued by $0.8 million.

After considering months of research into the organisation’s financial position and the future of the Australian publishing and bookselling scene, Barton decided he wanted not just the Collins shares but the entire Angus & Robertson business. He commenced what he did best— negotiation.

For Tjuringa—known for asset-stripping and maximising profit-ability— to diversify into an industry known for poor profit margins was odd. The Angus & Robertson directors were reluctant, smelling a rat. For many, the future of the grand old business was dear to them, regardless of the price being offered. They needed convincing that the iconic company’s structure would be preserved. Barton’s challenge was to convince the conservative board and major Angus & Robertson shareholders that Tjuringa was not buying to strip the business of its assets.

The media knew none of this until 24 April when a press statement was released. Tjuringa would be using the publicly listed Ipec Insurance to front the takeover. By 5 June 1970, Ipec Insurance had over 40 per cent of shares. Its control of the company was all over the newspapers. It was ready to offer remaining shareholders one Ipec Insurance share and 90c cash for every two Angus & Robertson shares. Costing an extra $2.3 million, the beauty of this proposal was, given Ipec Insurance had become such a complex entity, it was well-nigh impossible to put a value on its shares.

The group’s money-raising strategy once again was masterful. Rather than put up its own money, Tjuringa found a lender who was prepared to inject cash in exchange for property it needed. The AMP Society, the powerful Australian insurer, was after two properties to complete its Centrepoint development in Sydney’s CBD. Retailer Anthony Hordern & Sons, in whose shares Ipec Insurance had invested over $1 million, had a massive building, The Palace Emporium, on the corner of George, Pitt and Goulburn streets. AMP also had its eye on Angus & Robertson’s 89 Castlereagh Street premises. AMP agreed to put up enough cash for Tjuringa to buy a controlling interest in Angus & Robertson, in return for promising AMP the 89 Castlereagh Street site. Barton and his team agreed to lease back Castlereagh Street until AMP was ready to develop it.

The Sydney Morning Herald ’s financial editor wrote of Barton and the iconic Angus & Robertson: ‘For the first time in living memory, at least, it comes under the control of a dominant personality who is at once very money-conscious, young and tough, has his share of university degrees and reads books and has ideals . . . But if anyone is to preserve the A. & R. business intact (and if that is something worth preserving), it isn’t easy to see who else has the means, the spirit and the desire to attempt it.’

A week later Ipec Insurance submitted its formal notice of takeover. In July Barton wrote to shareholders, assuring them that if successful, ‘plans for the expansion of the book retailing and publishing divisions . . . will be implemented as quickly as possible’. Tjuringa had a strategy ready to roll. In a major changing of the guard, once Ipec Insurance had control, four Angus & Robertson board directors would resign, including Norman Cowper and Ken Wilder. Graham Cooke and Greg Farrell would join Barton on the revamped board.

In 1969 Tjuringa had diversified into commercial, industrial and residential real estate, mostly in the Sydney basin. Fancying themselves as developers, the team came up with a catchy moniker—CASH (City and Suburban Holdings)—though the name didn’t stick and they launched instead as City and Suburban Properties. Generally speaking, the concept was to acquire sites, gain rezoning approvals, then on-sell at profit to developers. The trick was having a senior manager who had the right relationships with local and state government to ‘smooth’ the process. If all went to plan, sites bought for $5000 an acre might sell for five times that. At its peak, the business would have around two dozen property projects on its books. While some were profitable, others would entail massive debt-ridden assets which haunted Gordon Barton for years.

Tjuringa had been buying shares in retailer Anthony Horderns, attracted by its valuable city real estate. Driving home one night, Barton heard on the radio that Horderns had made a takeover bid for Buckinghams. With around 30 stores, Buckinghams also came with plenty of city real estate, and employed around a thousand staff. Nick Aboud, Buckinghams’ managing director, declared the bid was unwelcome.

Tjuringa acted quickly. It offered Aboud a deal. He could have Tjuringa’s large Horderns shareholding in exchange for selling the group a large tranche of Buckinghams shares. Aboud agreed and at Tjuringa’s suggestion, accepted the Hordern bid also. The deal meant that overnight Tjuringa was the largest shareholder in Buckinghams. Tjuringa would soon own Buckinghams, while retailer Waltons would win Anthony Horderns.

Nick Aboud, inherited from the Buckinghams acquisition, would become very chummy with Barton. He was a gregarious, well-known businessman around town. Very friendly with government ministers, Aboud was useful for his networks. Barton and Farrell soon recognised him as a gifted door-opener for the deals they wanted to do, and he was installed as general manager of their property business.

‘That’s a good deal’, Aboud would say and Barton would be quick to agree, telling him to ‘sign them up’. Aboud would do the negotiating and smooth the progress of rezoning through council, though some observed that his offsider, Warren Johns, was often tardy in finalising sales.

The problem was Barton’s advisers did not have the power to reject property deals put forward by Aboud and endorsed by Barton. When he stepped into the group’s managing director role in 1970, Bill Pursche was somewhat horrified at the rate at which property was being acquired. Pursche admits Barton tended not to listen to his cautions about the real estate market.

Tjuringa’s proposed Mid City Centre in the Sydney CBD was a deal that promised to be the stuff of city legends. Instead it would become a millstone. Its genesis had been in Tjuringa’s acquisition of Buckinghams and, in July 1970, Angus & Robertson. Both had real estate in the very centre of Sydney’s shopping district, separated by an AMP-owned building. AMP would need to be convinced to sell. Tjuringa’s Angus &Robertson acquisition gave it a Pitt Street site that AMP badly wanted. The two companies did a building swap. Everyone was happy. Tjuringa now had an acre between George and Pitt streets, bordered by the Strand Arcade and Farmers department store, valued at some $23 million—ripe for redevelopment.

In July 1972, Barton announced plans for the site. Tjuringa was to invest over $60 million, largely in a 53-storey office tower (it would dwarf Australia Square, then the tallest Sydney building). Harry Seidler had been engaged to produce plans, including a magnificent five-level retail precinct of malls and arcades with through access to Pitt and George streets. It would be known as Mid City Centre, incorporating a pedestrian mall on Pitt Street. A British loan was mentioned. It would be the largest project ever undertaken by Tjuringa.

Council delayed its consent, costing Tjuringa $120,000 each month in holding charges. Commercial property values then crashed and interest rates soared. The huge loan required now looked like a pipe-dream. Tjuringa’s development plans were put on ice.

Years passed. When the tenants moved out, Tjuringa tried to sell the vacant site, but there were no buyers. So instead, by April 1978, desperate for some return, three floors were gutted, a food and drink court was thrown together and over 300 vendors invited to rent cheap stalls in a bargain basement flea market which Barton and Farrell christened Shopping World. It was a tragic come-down from Barton’s grand vision. In April 1980, desperate for cash and with their eye on other projects, Barton and Farrell would finally on-sell the site.

Based on its poor profit, Barton’s Tjuringa advisers had argued hard to sell up the Angus & Robertson retail, publishing and printing businesses quickly and walk away with a nice profit. However, Barton was a man of his word. He had promised Collins and Sir Norman Cowper’s board that Ipec Insurance would preserve the business in Australian hands. Perhaps he felt he deserved some indulgence, the chance to replace Norman Cowper as the iconic publisher’s chairman. Whatever the reason, Barton insisted on keeping the retail and publishing arms.

Tjuringa accountant Derek Bimson was horrified. In his mind, you buy it, you strip it, you go to the next one. It had been a beautiful deal. Now Barton was set on ruining it by holding onto the loss-making business without a strategy.

Shortly after the takeover, Barton hosted an Angus & Robertson staff dinner at a flagstone-floored venue in the historic Rocks precinct. As his newly acquired staff shifted on the rough wooden benches, Barton got up and spoke of Angus & Robertson and its place in Australia’s history. Staff recalled him reminding them Angus & Robertson was a great Australian institution whose character he would always recognise and respect. His message was not one of change, but of maintaining a fine reputation. But the rumour-mill was busy. There were whispers that UK publisher Paul Hamlyn had told Barton to turn the bookshop into a supermarket and publish only non-literary works. Other rumours suggested Barton would abandon publishing and sell Angus & Robertson’s list to the highest bidder. Staff did not know what was truth, what fiction.

The young accountant Gordon McCarthy had been a key player in the acquisition plan. According to some, he wanted a senior role as a reward for his efforts. Ultimately McCarthy was indeed charged with looking after the retail and publishing arms—an enormous job, though he recalls, ‘I wasn’t trying to be the CEO of publishing. I was being the management person to try and guide it to its next phase . . . By default I was running retail.’ But McCarthy had no retail experience, so was uncomfortable in the role. He asked Barton to find someone else for the retail arm of the business. ‘Oh well, we’ll think about it’, he recalls as Barton’s vague response.

McCarthy’s view was, ‘Let the guys in publishing flower, they’re fantastically talented and they can run it on their ears and I can sit in there once a week’. Indeed, Beatrice Davis, Douglas Stewart, John Abernethy and Bruce Semler were all highly capable. One ex-staffer recalls that soon after being appointed, McCarthy called a meeting of managers in Sydney. However, he introduced himself to no-one. It was quickly clear his people skills were not his strength.

Within its retail business, Angus & Robertson’s fiction and reference sections were very profitable. But given the wonderfully eccentric characters working there, McCarthy was reminded of the Are You Being Served? shopfloor every time he ventured into the Castlereagh Street store in Sydney. The place was rather like a museum, with brown linoleum and brown bookshelves. ‘They were dreary looking stores’, recalls book publisher Kevin Weldon.

It was the staff who brought Angus & Robertson to life. The fruity Hedley Jeffries ran the hardback fiction division. He would have nothing to do with the orange and white Penguin paperback section down the back and saw his main market as wealthy Eastern suburbs wives. Hedley used to dust and polish his books as if each was a precious gem. When Angus & Robertson organised its first sale, Jeffries took it as a personal affront. Even amongst its executives, profit had been a dirty word before the Tjuringa takeover. Angus & Robertson had heretofore focused on servicing the public rather than making money. The business had never written down unsold stock, believing that was discounting shareholder funds. To Hedley Jeffries it was his own children management were asking him to mark down.

At the first Angus & Robertson board meeting Barton presided over as chairman in 1970, it was announced that the business was on a collision course with the New South Wales Vice Squad over Portnoy’s Complaint, a very funny book by Philip Roth about a New York Jewish lad’s obsession with masturbation. The Vice Squad had warned it would prosecute if the bookseller attempted to import the book and put it on sale.

Board members were nervous about the effect even an attempted prosecution would have on their iconic firm’s reputation. Barton, however, argued that Angus & Robertson was a bookseller not a censor, and that it would in fact be a poor reflection on the business if it allowed the Vice Squad to dictate what it could sell. The board bravely agreed. The order duly arrived from the US and was dispatched to Angus & Robertson bookstores around the country.

Not unexpectedly, the New South Wales Vice Squad prosecuted. Barton instructed his solicitor, Graham Cooke, who in turn briefed William Deane QC and his junior counsel, George Masterman. A great list of leading writers was rounded up to testify on behalf of the infamous book—Patrick White and Thea Astley among them.

The trial took place in the imposing sandstone bulk of Taylor Square’s District Criminal Court. Journalist David Marr was at that time a junior with Allen Allen & Hemsley. Tjuringa company secretary Liz Weeding recalls she and Marr surreptitiously entered the court early each day, going into the witness stand and ensuring the swearing-in bible lay open at the ‘sexy bits’.

With charges that included contributing to the delinquency of a minor, the Vice Squad alleged that one purchaser of the depraved book had been a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. Taking the witness stand, a sergeant testified that he had seen with his own eyes the said schoolgirl buy the book. George Masterman asked the police officer how he had known the buyer was a schoolgirl. She was wearing a school uniform, replied the sergeant. Masterman pushed him to describe the uniform, which the sergeant did.

‘Sergeant,’ said Masterman, ‘do you have a girl of your own at school?’

The sergeant replied that he did indeed have two.

‘Do your daughters usually wear their school uniforms in vacation?’

The sergeant agreed that they did not and after evidence that the date of the offence fell in the middle of the school holidays the defence rested.

Ultimately the jury could not agree on a verdict. With a hung jury the case was dismissed. A second long trial commenced and at its conclusion the new jury again could not agree. The determined Vice Squad brought a third prosecution but this time Barton’s lawyers persuaded the attorney-general to have it withdrawn. Barton wrote that it was the last time a book was criminally prosecuted for obscenity in New South Wales.

In Australia, strategically placed stores were to serve inner metropolitan and major suburban markets. Barton assured shareholders that reducing stock in expensive city outlets, housing it instead in a central warehouse, offering mail and telephone orders, would lead to cost savings and allow an increased range of publications, benefiting customer and shareholder alike. He decided to accelerate Angus & Robertson Publishing’s international growth—particularly in nearby Singapore and Manila.

The ideas were smart, but Angus & Robertson was not an organisation that embraced change. Unfortunately the acquisition by IPEC would become one of the most controversial Australian takeovers of the decade.

Angus & Robertson’s London manager decided to leave. Then a decision had to be made on how to bypass executive director George Ferguson’s son John, who saw himself as taking over the publishing division. Barton solved this problem by sending John to manage the London operation—an office that distributed published Australian books, identified European titles for Australian production and originated a small list of its own.

Executive director George Ferguson had been completely marginalised and early in 1971 he resigned after 40 years with the company. Don Hardy, in charge of retail, exited the same year. The next year Aubrey Cousins went. Australian intellectuals began murmuring about Barton’s decimation of the ancien régime.

Barton started bringing in staff he trusted—from the Australia Party and other of his businesses—despite their lack of industry experience. He asked Grahame Bunyan to become marketing manager for the retail side of the business. Bunyan knew little about marketing and less about the book trade and admitted as much to his employer. True to form, Barton was unperturbed but promised to give Bunyan a few weeks to ‘pick it up’. Bunyan recognised in Barton the sort of man who would meet someone and if he was impressed would think, ‘That’s an interesting bloke. He’s got a lot of potential, I’ll offer him a job. I don’t have a job for him but I’ll secure him.’

Two years of dreadful financial performance and poor people management followed, which Grahame Bunyan recalls as traumatic for many. Gordon McCarthy recalls some typically off-the-wall ideas. ‘Why don’t we do Henry Lawson poetry on toilet paper?’ Barton would cry. McCarthy often found it hard to judge when his employer was serious.

For decades the Australian book industry had obeyed a cartel arrangement whereby booksellers agreed not to reduce retail prices within the first two years of a book’s release. Barton’s entry into the book retail market meant the practice was rapidly called into question.* The book establishment was to Barton like any other establishment: there to be punctured. He would later confess to a journalist, ‘I have met more stupid people in the book business than almost any other. I don’t know what it is about books that makes people stupid. Perhaps it’s because they are supposed to be gentlemen and gentlemen are not supposed to be very bright, but some of these are surprisingly stupid, intolerant, quite unpleasant people.’

Barton and his team discovered that as operating costs rose, gross margins were being reduced by British and US publishers. He was ready to thumb his nose at these overseas publishers. ‘Up yours. I’m going to show you who runs this place’ is how McCarthy explains Barton’s motivation.

Barton called together his key competitors—John Forsyth of Dymocks and Stanley Horwitz of Grahames—to argue that each of their retail operations would go broke unless they took action. Grahames had been gradually edging up its prices over the previous twelve months without much fuss. Impressed by this and by the fact that he had regularly increased IPEC’s freight prices without losing client goodwill, Barton suggested to Forsyth and Horwitz pushing up the profit margin on virtually all books other than texts and paperbacks from 40 to 50 per cent.

Barton was compelling when in full flight. Forsyth and Horwitz were convinced. Every book already on the shelves was to be marked up 10 per cent immediately and publishers advised that unless a margin of 50 per cent off retail was allowed, new books would be priced to give the retailer that margin anyway. The new pricing was to become effective from 1 October 1970 and Angus & Robertson Publishing, as well as the Horwitz publisher Ure Smith, were to allow the three retailers a 50 per cent margin immediately. On 22 October 1970 Barton wrote to staff, ‘This action will of itself go a long way to making our retail operations commercially viable . . . You may take this as an invitation to participate in this activity.’

In McCarthy’s view, the effects were disastrous: ‘There was total confusion. In these days before computers every title on every shelf in every store in Australia had to be manually re-priced. The department stores laughed because they could sell them for less . . . It was rather like throwing a bomb into the place.’ Some shops marked up all their stock, while others received higher discounts on large quantities, so sold at normal prices. In other stores, managers maintained the old prices on new titles and widely advertised publications. Even the two Angus & Robertson owned shops in Sydney’s CBD (Castlereagh Street and Swains) had many discrepancies in prices of the same titles.

The book-buying public protested and the newspapers voiced their concerns. In bookstores, senior staff had been insufficiently sold on the idea and shop assistants were soon demoralised by customer complaints. Many staff refused to mark up books they already thought overpriced; others resigned. Melbourne manager John Burchall was assigned to press the publishers for higher discounts. Vehemently against Barton’s price rise, he resigned.

By early 1971, just months after its introduction, the inconsistencies were so marked that the agreed pricing policy collapsed. In McCarthy’s eyes the failure owed much to a lack of proper consideration and planning.

Barton’s heavy-handed strategies meant Angus & Robertson’s stable of authors became increasingly restless. The company feared they would move to other publishers. Something drastic needed to be done. McCarthy introduced Writers’ dinners, Writers’ fellowships and a Young Australians series.

The first Writers’ Fellowship winner was Kerryn Higgs, on the basis of a brief extract of her work. When her book was finished, it became clear that it was Australia’s first significant lesbian novel. Beatrice Davis, Angus & Robertson’s doyen of editors, for one was outraged.

The first Writers’ Dinner was held at Sydney’s Argyle Tavern restaurant in 1972. It coincided with the launch of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in paperback. A Vogue photo spread of the evening featured a picture of Germaine, Barton and Tjuringa company secretary Liz Weeding, Barton’s partner of the time, together with Gordon McCarthy and his wife Wendy, and Graham and Jenny Cooke.

The famous feminist attended parties at Barton’s home on a number of occasions. A few years later, Barton would say of Germaine Greer: ‘Whenever I meet her, I irritate her beyond measure by telling her she oversimplifies things. She thinks I have a carping sort of attitude—a bit of a chauvinist. We’ve had some ding-dong battles. I don’t think she really enjoys me, and I sort of disconcert her.’

Whatever the business, it was wrestling with the challenge that was important to Barton. Profits, if they came, were a bonus. As a part of his determination to transfuse modern ideas and techniques into the Angus & Robertson business, Barton’s buzz word became merchandising. When Englishman Paul Hamlyn and Barton met at a Sydney dinner party hosted by Rupert Murdoch, the pair clicked immediately. Paul Hamlyn had recently sold his eponymous publishing house, only to launch another— Octopus books. Barton decided that ‘[Paul] Hamlyn is probably the best book merchandiser in the world, so I thought I’d get a bit friendly with him and find out a bit of his stuff and graft a bit of it on’.

Barton would become a big fan of Hamlyn’s, singing his praise to many friends. What he particularly admired was ‘the way he has not been swayed by fashion or what pompous asses say is good form’.

New to publishing, Barton was naïve in some of the deals he set up, according to Richard Walsh. He was never one for the detail. Angus & Robertson would find itself under contract to take identically large amounts of every Octopus title, regardless of Australian demand, with a no returns clause.

Direct Acceptance Corporation was one of the few Australian finance companies that lacked a major bank as a shareholder. Without this relationship it made it more difficult and expensive for DAC to borrow funds. Despite approaches to the major banks, none had shown an interest in coming on board. This was unsurprising since neither Barton nor his team had built bridges into the Old Boy system that opened doors in the financial world. Shann Turnbull, DAC chairman at the time, was undeterred. Why not buy our own bank? he suggested. Once acquired, the bank could buy Direct Acceptance. The problem was, in 1970s Australian banking licences were scarce.

Shann’s problem fitted nicely with an opportunity Barton had discovered. By mid-1970 Tjuringa had been looking closely at buying undervalued assets overseas, and a banking asset was at the top of its shopping list. In talking to a wheat export negotiator, Barton had learnt that Australia had no relationships with Middle East institutions to finance its wheat deals. Research soon uncovered the fact that within Lebanon’s financial sector lay 70 banking licences, some of which were inactive. Potentially a dormant banking licence—the shell if you like— could be bought for a few million dollars at most. Australian wheat contracts could be a legitimate and profitable first customer.

So Shann wrote to the Reserve Bank of Australia, indicating interest in buying an overseas bank. The Reserve Bank was taken aback—no Australian business had ever suggested such a thing. As Turn bull recollects, the bank said in essence, ‘Well, when you have a more concrete proposal, tell us more’. This meant it lacked even a policy on the concept.

So en route to an Austrian ski holiday in January 1971, Shann spent a week in Beirut. Introduced by the Australian embassy, he had with him a list of licensed banks. The news quickly spread that an Australian was in town looking to buy a bank. The next thing Shann Turnbull recalls was receiving a message from 35-year-old Saudi arms dealer and businessman Adnan Khashoggi, informing him of an uncle with a bank that might be for sale. It turned out to be large and ‘out of our league’, rues Turnbull.

Nonetheless, Turnbull located a more suitable bank and obtained on Tjuringa’s behalf a six-month option on a controlling shareholding. Tjuringa looked set to have its bank.

* It would be 1974 before the Trade Practices Act was passed in Australia, officially outlawing cartel arrangements under its restrictive trade practices provisions.