Sydney view: Skase: wide-boy whose ill-gotten wealth was a bad bargain

By GILES PARKINSON

Christopher Skase, aspiring journalist, entrepreneur and fugitive, died on Monday - and there was barely a soul to say a good word about him.

"A pathetic, unnecessary ending", headlined one newspaper. "Greed was slanted to saving the empire", said another. "Skase: the death of a deluded fugitive" said the Australian Financial Review.

Skase was not well-liked. As a young financial journalist and in the early years of his career as an entrepreneur, he quickly won the confidence of businessmen and bankers - and just as quickly lost it.

Said Henry Bosch, former head of the National Companies and Securities Commission:

"He played fast and loose and had more regard for his own personal advantage than his fiduciary duties to shareholders."

But he did have talents. One of the forgotten aspects of Skase's career was his ability to parlay a small amount of money into a multibillion-dollar media and leisure empire.

Trevor Sykes, one of the country's leading business writers and Skase's first boss when the youngster landed a job at Melbourne's Herald Sun, notes that few other entrepreneurs create anything that lasts beyond their own corporate careers.

Skase, at least, created some luxury hotels in Queensland and the Seven TV Network, which largely remains in the form he originally fashioned it.

But Skase was undone by greed. Like many corporate empires of the day, his was built on debt and had the financial strength of a pack of cards.

His business empire was much like his favourite yacht, Mirage III - so laden with marble and other opulence that it became impossible to manoeuvre.

Skase, like Alan Bond, Robert Holmes a Court and John Spalvins, was undone by the 1987 crash, high interest rates and a disbelief that he could do anything wrong.

For the last 10 years of his life, he was a fugitive from justice and the enemies he imagined were hiding under every bush.

He was lampooned and pilloried over his attempts to fight extradition, and his 1994 court appearance in a wheelchair and oxygen mask will be remembered as one of the most pathetic acts in Australian corporate history.

Alan Bond, who ripped $A1 billion ($1.2 billion) out of Bell Resources and is considered to have done worse injustices to shareholders, has many admirers because he stayed at home to face the music and pay his dues. Mr Bond can live in his own country.

Skase is generally assumed to have taken $A10 million with him to Majorca - although the Australian Government still wants to know where $A177 million of creditors' money disappeared to.

But, as Sykes noted this week, he paid a high price for the money.

"If you gave me $10 million and said you have to spend the rest of your life as a fugitive ... suffering ill health, with the Government pursuing you - and you become despised in your native country, then I think that's a pretty bad bargain."

* Giles Parkinson edits AFR.com