![]() ![]() Denison bought them out of the two Guardians for the equivalent of around $12 million in today’s money, about a third in cash and two-thirds in shares in his Associated Newspapers. To entice Denison to buy the Daily Guardian, Smith and Packer announced they planned to start a Sunday Guardian to compete with Denison’s Sunday Sun. But the success of his strategy in those industries led him to make serious miscalculations with his newspapers. In both cases he prospered by buying and assimilating the competition - actions that would now be illegal under antitrust laws - to form a near-monopoly. He had made a fortune from his involvement in Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd, better known as AWA, and British Tobacco. Thanks largely to his other business activities, Denison was probably the richest newspaper proprietor in Australia at the time. He began negotiations to sell the Daily Guardian to Hugh Denison, who owned the dominant afternoon newspaper, the Sun, as well as the Sunday Sun. But relations between Packer and McKay were stormy, and in 1927, after more conflict, McKay sold out to Packer and Smith.īy 1929 Smith’s interests had shifted. ![]() Although it initially struggled against the established morning papers, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph, the new paper did well thanks to Packer’s marketing strategies, which included the first Miss Australia competition and free insurance for readers. Two years later, with the company’s profits still rising, the pair added a new title to the stable, the Daily Guardian. In 1921, after Smith’s Weekly had become profitable, Smith generously gave Packer and McKay one-third each of the paper’s ownership. Packer, who between them produced a lively and visually attractive paper. He assigned its day-to-day running to McKay and R.C. Having been ousted from his seat on the Sydney City Council, Smith established the weekly at the suggestion of journalist Claude McKay. Packer from the ranks of knockabout journalists was the wealthy Sydney identity and hotelier James Joynton Smith, who was launching a new - and later legendary - paper, Smith’s Weekly. Like many dynasties, the Packer family owes its fortune as much to luck as to skill. ![]() Gone is the kind of power and influence wielded by his great-grandfather Robert Clyde Packer (known as R.C.), his grandfather Frank or his father Kerry. His future in Australian corporate life will now be severely circumscribed, and his political clout and public prestige much diminished. The fourth generation’s James is unlikely to return to rags, but after last month’s damning findings about his management of Crown casinos, his business ambitions are in ruins. But that hasn’t been the case for that uniquely Australian dynasty, the Packers, whose cunning, drive and ruthlessness have sustained a family fortune over the four generations since its founding a century ago. Wealthy families cycle from rags to riches and back again within three generations - or so goes the old saying. ![]()
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