Solo business rises from ashes of split
Crown Group co-founder’s exciting new venture
With the liquidation of the $700m property developer Crown Group Ltd almost behind him, co-founder Iwan Sunito is looking ahead to an ambitious public listing of his new company within the next seven years.
Mr Sunito, 58, who has just appointed former Lendlease chief executive Rod Leaver to his board, says he is through the worst of the nasty split with his former business partner Paul Sathio.
Mr Sunito and Mr Sathio had been business partners for nearly 30 years but both men fell out spectacularly last year and have since launched personal litigation suits against each other in one of the worst and most public displays of internecine warfare.
The Kalimantan-born Mr Sunito, an architect and builder by training, said he is now on track to assemble a multibillion dollar portfolio of hotels, serviced apartments, build to rent, residential and retail assets spread across Sydney, Jakarta and Los Angeles by 2031. And he won’t ever seek a future business partner in his new venture.
Apart from Mr Leaver, he has attracted several heavyweights to the fledgling board of his new company, One Global Capital, which he will soon announce to the market.
“I will never have another business partner. I am going to take this company public,” Mr Sunito said. “Yes, the public listing brings a lot more accountability and transparency, but also brain power. That’s really important to me.
“Prior to the destruction of Crown, Crown was a pure development company and income was lumpy. To go public you must be a REIT.”
In the seven months since BDO was appointed Crown’s liquidator, Mr Sunito continues to maintain that he is OK with the liquidation, saying the company was completely dysfunctional under the old management system.
“From my side I am positive, but in any liquidation there are things I am not happy with. (But) I knew this split would come. The liquidator appointment was the best thing because the damage to the business was massive.”
Where once Crown employed 150 staff it is today down to 40 employees. The construction division has gone from 60 staff to five.
Meanwhile, Mr Sunito has been speaking with Giorgio Armani and his team in Milan under his plan to build an “Aman” like prestige hotel in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood, saying he has optioned a 6000sq m site associated with the Chatswood Bowling Club. Here he is planning a five-star hotel, 300 large-size residential units and retail for the site, and says he has the $175m acquisition of the site already funded.
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma will be invited to enter a competition to design the tower with the Armani team to be hopefully involved in the interiors. The project will go to the state government for a socalled gateway approval process in April. If approved, Mr Sunito, the chief executive and chairman of One Global Capital, said the tower would take three years to complete.
“The Chatswood site feels like a village,” he said. “At 6000sq m it will be the largest site in Chatswood.”
He said the next three years will be about recruiting people to his new company and building a portfolio of assets.
By the end of the year, Mr Sunito said he will launch his One Macquarie Park development in Sydney’s north west. He said the project, which includes residential housing and affordable housing, will have a gross sales value of $500m.
Several assets remain within the old Crown portfolio and a judge had ruled a buy out order over sites in the Sydney suburbs of Five Dock, where Crown still owns a $100m residential site, and an industrial site in Strathfield, which Mr Sunito said had contamination issues. The sale of several of Crown’s Brisbane assets have exceeded Mr Sunito’s expectations in terms of prices achieved, including Crown’s West End project.
He has previously divulged one of the major sources of enmity between himself and Mr Sathio – who had together completed 23 projects with a total value of $3.5bn – had been the construction division.
Meanwhile, Mr Sathio confirmed he is developing residential units in the outer Western Sydney suburb of Bringelly and closer to the CBD in Burwood.
“I will never have another business partner. I am going to take this company public
Iwan Sunito
Crown Group co-founder