Wallaby-turned-financier Jason Little buys $23m Bondi Beach ‘shell’

Still with Manly’s high-end deals, the Fairy Bower rumour mill has been in overdrive in recent weeks over who was behind the recent, record-setting $35 million house set above Shelly Beach.

Among the plethora of names being offered up is that of former South Sydney Rabbitohs player-turned-rich lister Wes Maas, the chief of ASX-listed construction company Maas Group, and whose wife Emma already owns a house on a Catholic Church leasehold on the high side of the street.

Alas, for Rabbitohs fans, Maas’s office denies the purchase, stating: “Wes Maas has not purchased a property.” That’s that then.

In the absence of any clues from Clarke & Humel’s Michael Clarke and Cherie Humel, we will leave it to settlement records to reveal the buyer who recalibrated local high-end housing values, and what sort of job it takes to buy one of the best houses on the northern beaches.

Allco Finance reunion

The for-sale signage and online marketing has been quietly taken down on the Tamarama home of events producer Antony Spanbrook and his medico partner Chris Yeo in what looks like a hush-hush sale.

The Agency’s Ben Collier and Sotheby’s James Ball had a $20 million guide last year when it was listed, and had steadfastly stuck to the asking price, suggesting a sale price about that level.

While the agents are hoping to maintain much secrecy about it all, a caveat not only confirms it has sold but reveals it was bought by London-based shoppers Geraldine Cooper-Brown and Neil Brown.

If Brown sounds familiar to finance types that’s because he was once head of global capital market group at investment giant Allco Finance, which at the time he was hired in 2007 boasted $4.3 billion in assets.

Of course, things went awry a year later thanks to the global financial crisis when Allco collapsed with debts of $1.1 billion, making it one of the country’s highest-profile corporate collapses.

There’s no mention of that ancient history on Brown’s latest corporate bio. Instead, the former private equity operative and co-founder of Minerva Capital Advisors (where he once hired his late boss David Coe) is now head of capital formation at London-based, global renewable energy company Low Carbon.

And when Brown eventually settles on his newly purchased Tamarama house he will also be the owner of a Tony Masters Design residence that was, coincidentally, built by Gordon Fell, of Rubicon fame.

For those who missed the legion of headlines about Allco and Rubicon, the latter was a property trust empire founded by Fell and sold in a debt-laden state to Allco in 2007, less than a year before Allco collapsed.

Fell and his wife Pip had already sold their Tamarama digs by then, having pocketed $6.4 million in 2004, and a few years later purchased Point Piper’s Routala trophy home for $28.75 million. They sold Routala in 2018 for $51 million.

Kiwi cash buyers

Michael and Svetlana Huljich, of one of New Zealand’s richest families, have snapped up a whole duplex in Darling Point, paying $14 million – no mortgage required.

The three-level property was sold just days after it was listed for $13 million by Highland Property’s Bill Malouf on behalf of Julia Cooney, daughter of yachtie and renewable energy boss Jim Cooney.

Cooney jnr was aged just 20 when she purchased it as her first Sydney home in 2018 for $8.67 million, also paying cash at the time.

The Huljich family have long appeared on the title of Sydney’s high-end housing market. Michael’s brother Christopher owned waterfront land in Point Piper that he sold to “Aussie John” Symond in 1999 for almost $11 million. The site now hosts Symond’s grand mansion that was listed for sale last month for more than $200 million.

Christopher’s son Jason Huljich is another Darling Point local. He purchased the Federation house Callooa for $22.65 million in 2020.