1980s, Brian Burke saw something he especially liked in Alan Bond, a former sign-writer, and Laurie Connell, the son of a busdriver. Bond and Connell were certainly not the typical old-school-tie Perth businessmen who’d run the city for decades and they quickly sided with Burke. But the premier soon came to realise that Connell, who had been involved in a string of horseracing scandals and would end up going to prison, was hardly squeaky-clean. “I’d hate to stand between Laurie and a bag of money,” he said.
Connelldazzled Perth with his conspicuous consumption. He owned 400 horses in Australia and England, hosted a grand reception for Princess Anne at his country estate and bulldozed six waterfront houses in Dalkeith, an exclusive riverfront suburb, to make way for a multimillion-dollar mansion on a new 10,000-square-metre “superblock” – a scheme that had to be abandoned when the good times ended in October1987. It would be another two decades before Perth would again revel in the euphoria of a boom of such magnitude – and by that time Andrew Forrest would be richer than anyone who came before him. But in champagne-soaked Perth in the mid 1980s, few dared to ask whether Alan Bond and Laurie Connell might be crooks.
Forrest certainly wasn’t about to question the business ethics of Bond or Connell.The tycoons would become two of his own treasured clients after he left Kirke Securities in 1986 to launch the Perth office of Sydney broking house Jacksons. Forrest was hired by Jacksons’ managing director, Bob Pfafflin, who was hellbent on expanding the firm’s operations in Australia and overseas at what was the peak of the 1980s stockmarket boom. Jacksons would become the first Australianstockbroking firm to be publicly listed, and it boasted branch offices in Melbourne, London, Paris, Munich and Hong Kong. Graeme Kirke says he wasn’t surprised the precocious Forrest left his firm to accept Pfafflin’s offer to run his own operation, even at the age of twenty-four. “I don’t think Andrew could ever work without being the intellectual driving force,” he says. Another of Forrest’scolleagues from that era marvels at his audacity in taking on the establishment after he’d been in the industry for only three years. “That was something adults did – not 24-year-old blokes,” he says.
The fit between Jacksons and Forrest was perfect. Jacksons had grown in the 1980s by backing many of the companies the establishment frowned upon, including Alan Bond’s Bond Corporation. “Jacksonswere go-getting blokes who wanted to take broking away from the old-school-tie environment,” says former employee Peter “Cabbie” Richard. “They were never going to get business out of the conservative Collins Street in Melbourne, but as resources developed in WA, that created a whole new breed of people and they’re the people that Forrest represented. Forrest was the start of the era whereyou had to be innovative, the resources industry was going up and you had to be in the middle of it.”
At Jacksons, Forrest assembled a team of Perth whiz-kids who were fast-talking, hard-living and hungry for the next deal. The most colourful of the pack – which came to be known around town as the “Jacksons Five” – was the Ferrari-driving Dave Rigoll, who started out working as a plumberbut got his break in the early 1980s when he was hired by Laurie Connell as a merchant banking junior at the ill-fated Rothwells.
Rigoll was often the last man standing, accompanied by a bevy of beautiful women, at the trendy Club Bay View in Claremont, where the cashed-up Jacksons boys would order “squadrons” of twenty-four drinks at a time. “Andrew idolised Dave,” says a friend from thatera. The super-slick salesman went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars through a Kazakhstani oil venture and at one point boasted houses in London, Dubai and the Swiss tax haven of Zug. And he never quite stayed out of trouble,
Connelldazzled Perth with his conspicuous consumption. He owned 400 horses in Australia and England, hosted a grand reception for Princess Anne at his country estate and bulldozed six waterfront houses in Dalkeith, an exclusive riverfront suburb, to make way for a multimillion-dollar mansion on a new 10,000-square-metre “superblock” – a scheme that had to be abandoned when the good times ended in October1987. It would be another two decades before Perth would again revel in the euphoria of a boom of such magnitude – and by that time Andrew Forrest would be richer than anyone who came before him. But in champagne-soaked Perth in the mid 1980s, few dared to ask whether Alan Bond and Laurie Connell might be crooks.
Forrest certainly wasn’t about to question the business ethics of Bond or Connell.The tycoons would become two of his own treasured clients after he left Kirke Securities in 1986 to launch the Perth office of Sydney broking house Jacksons. Forrest was hired by Jacksons’ managing director, Bob Pfafflin, who was hellbent on expanding the firm’s operations in Australia and overseas at what was the peak of the 1980s stockmarket boom. Jacksons would become the first Australianstockbroking firm to be publicly listed, and it boasted branch offices in Melbourne, London, Paris, Munich and Hong Kong. Graeme Kirke says he wasn’t surprised the precocious Forrest left his firm to accept Pfafflin’s offer to run his own operation, even at the age of twenty-four. “I don’t think Andrew could ever work without being the intellectual driving force,” he says. Another of Forrest’scolleagues from that era marvels at his audacity in taking on the establishment after he’d been in the industry for only three years. “That was something adults did – not 24-year-old blokes,” he says.
The fit between Jacksons and Forrest was perfect. Jacksons had grown in the 1980s by backing many of the companies the establishment frowned upon, including Alan Bond’s Bond Corporation. “Jacksonswere go-getting blokes who wanted to take broking away from the old-school-tie environment,” says former employee Peter “Cabbie” Richard. “They were never going to get business out of the conservative Collins Street in Melbourne, but as resources developed in WA, that created a whole new breed of people and they’re the people that Forrest represented. Forrest was the start of the era whereyou had to be innovative, the resources industry was going up and you had to be in the middle of it.”
At Jacksons, Forrest assembled a team of Perth whiz-kids who were fast-talking, hard-living and hungry for the next deal. The most colourful of the pack – which came to be known around town as the “Jacksons Five” – was the Ferrari-driving Dave Rigoll, who started out working as a plumberbut got his break in the early 1980s when he was hired by Laurie Connell as a merchant banking junior at the ill-fated Rothwells.
Rigoll was often the last man standing, accompanied by a bevy of beautiful women, at the trendy Club Bay View in Claremont, where the cashed-up Jacksons boys would order “squadrons” of twenty-four drinks at a time. “Andrew idolised Dave,” says a friend from thatera. The super-slick salesman went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars through a Kazakhstani oil venture and at one point boasted houses in London, Dubai and the Swiss tax haven of Zug. And he never quite stayed out of trouble,
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