Alan Bond (businessman)
Alan Bond ( born April 22, 1938 in London, United Kingdom) is an Australian entrepreneur. He gained as the owner of the Australia II that won the America's Cup sailing competition in 1983 to international prominence. After the sensational bankruptcy of its group of companies 1992, he was benched for fraud for several years imprisonment.
Life
Alan Bond came in 1938 in London to the world. In 1950, his parents with him to Australia. At the age of 19 he founded in 1959 with the Bond Corporation his first company. In Perth and around the city he built with borrowed money initially on a real estate business, to which were added later in Australia and internationally, other areas such as breweries, diamond mines, wholesale companies, newspapers and television stations. In 1982, the Bond Corporation, the largest company in the state of Western Australia.
Gained international recognition Bond through his participation at the traditional America's Cup sailing competition. As a ship owner, he tried for the first time in 1974 with the Southern Cross, followed in 1977 and 1980 with the Australia, in vain to win since its inception in 1851 always defended by Americans Cup for Australia. Even if he could not win the Cup until then, he was awarded for his commitment to sport in 1978 the award as Australian of the Year. Finally he succeeded in 1983 as the first non-American boat Australia II and its crew to win the award and to bring the competition to Australia.
Alan Bond, who had not attended college themselves, joined in the 1980s emerged as an important patron in the field of education. He donated to the Bond University, the first private university in Australia, whose campus was opened in Gold Coast in 1987. In the same year he made as an art collector headlines. The most expensive piece of his collection should the painting Irises by Vincent van Gogh, which is the bond acquired for 53.9 million U.S. dollars in New York auction house Sotheby's. First, the public assumed that it was at this price to the highest ever achieved at auction purchase price, but later it was announced that Sotheby's had protruded about half the auction price as a loan. After Bond neither its share of the purchase price paid in full, nor could pay back the loan, the painting was returned to the auction house and later came for an undisclosed sum to the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Bond's financial problems began with the stock market crash of Black Monday, as a result, he lost most of his fortune. So he had acquired in 1987 for Australian $ 1 billion the TV station Channel Nine Television Network, which he had to sell three years later with significant losses again. With over 9 billion dollars in debt off the group of companies of Bond in 1992 was declared bankrupt. This was followed in this context, various methods of fraud that led to a seven-year Gefängsnisstrafe 1997. In 2000, Bond came early from prison and has since headed with his son Craig, a company that in the oil and diamond business operates.
Bond was from 1955 until the divorce in 1992 married to Eileen Hughes. From this marriage four children were born. In 1995 he married the stewardess and later theater producer Diana Bliss. She committed suicide in 2012.