DIXON’S BIG PAYBACK AFTER NAG’S HEAD SALE
FORMER Qantas chief executive and Crown director Geoff Dixon has trousered around $1m a year over the past seven years after making the tough call to sell his popular Nag’s Head Hotel in Sydney’s inner city Glebe.
Mr Dixon and partners paid just over $5m for the Nag’s Head Hotel in the middle of 2015, but sold the historic watering hole last week for around $12m as pub prices continue to surge – equating to a before tax profit of around $7m.
Built in the 1860s, The Nag’s Head Hotel is a popular inner city watering hole, and it is believed Mr Dixon, who declined to comment, was intent on taking advantage of cashing in on the buoyant pub market.
However, the aviation and tourism veteran will retain his two other pubs in Sydney’s outer Camden, the Plough and Harrow Hotel, which is run by family members, and closer to the Sydney CBD, the Blues Point Hotel in Mcmahons Point.
Mr Dixon undertook a small $500,000 renovation during his ownership of the Nag’s Head which is replete with 17 pokies. It has been sold to Marcello Colosimo of Momento Hospitality, which also owns the Royal Albert in Surry Hills, and the Friend in Hand in the suburb of Glebe.
“Our recent purchase of three inner-city freehold hotels speaks to a strategy around portfolio balance, and also an opportunity to activate some food and beverage levers we have been formulating and look forward to activating,” said Colosimo in a statement to The Australian.
The sale of the Nag’s Head Hotel by Mr Dixon and his business partners David Birkbeck and Russ Lowe, of the DBL Pub Group, was negotiated by HTL Property agents Andrew Jolliffe and Sam Handy via an off-market process.
Mr Jolliffe said in a statement that he was encouraged by the positive activity exhibited by pub and hotel sales across multiple states in
Australia over the past few weeks, and believes this should illustrate the quality of investment opportunities enjoyed by this asset class.
Mr Dixon purchased the Nag’s Head from the O’hara family back in 2015 and took the pub through the renovation in keeping with its Old English-style theme.
Fronting St John’s Rd, the Glebe pub is a popular watering hole with Sydney University students.
It is about 150 years old, in keeping with Mr Dixon’s popular Blues Point Hotel in wealthy Mcmahons Point, which dates back to 1864.
The Dixon family paid more than $6m for the Blues Point Hotel in 2014 and have since renovated the holding.
Mr Dixon, a former chairman of Tourism Australia, started buying pubs for his family in 2012 with the purchase of the historic Plough and Harrow in Camden, 65km southwest of Sydney’s CBD, for more than $4m.