Herd on the Terrace: Caveat an intriguing twist in Chris and Tia Ellison’s Mosman Park home sale

There’s been an intriguing twist in the quest to sell Perth’s most expensive home after Tia Ellison lodged a caveat over the Mosman Park property.

Mineral Resources billionaire Chris Ellison and wife Tia bought the palatial Mosman Park estate for $57.5 million in 2009, hanging out the for sale sign in April of this year. Western suburbs agent Vivien Yap has led the campaign.

It’s yet to find a buyer, however, in a sign the market for extraordinary mansions may have cooled.

The Bull can reveal Ms Ellison lodged a caveat — a legal restriction on the mega-property — with Landgate “to protect views from” the couple’s more recently purchased downsizer next door. It was finalised this week.

And in a case of happy families, while Ms Ellison was acting as owner of the new, smaller home; Mr Ellison signed for the older, encumbered property. Ain’t love grand.

In effect the move will preserve the value, and vistas, from the couple’s new home in the event the old property ever sells. This might come at the cost of a lower sale price yet we expect the Ellison’s won’t be too bothered.

Asked by The Bull whether the billionaires were eager to have a yarn about their personal legal manoeuvres a spokesman firmly brushed this bovine off. But The Bull is happy to tour the property nonetheless should the offer arise.

John’s away

The Terrace is bidding farewell to a stalwart of good governance as Australian Shareholders Association rep John Campbell retires after years of keeping the pressure on the titans of corporate WA.

We’re told Campbell likely attended more than 100 annual general meetings for public companies in his 17 years standing up for investors.

The 81-year-old Campbell told The Bull he had been interested in monitoring listed businesses because of his audit background.

“And to some degree I was concerned over losses and corporate failures arising from the (Global Financial Crisis),” he said thinking back to his early work with the ASA in 2009.

His favourite AGM was Wesfarmers; long-loved by Perth’s mum and dad (and grandma and grandpa) investors for showcasing products across the conglomerate including Priceline Pharmacy.

“The attendance has always been amazingly large and its shareholders come from a wide spectrum with many different perspectives and interesting questions,” Campbell said.

“WES AGMs have excellent pre-AGM concerts and stalls representing the various businesses together with the excellent post-AGM refreshments”.

There had been some stressful moments over the years but Campbell joked monitoring companies had “certainly improved my keyboard skills”.

Colleague Len Roy said Campbell had been “very supportive in a mentor capacity to the ASA monitoring team at large”.

The Bull hears the octogenarian is set to spend more time with family, lowering his golf handicap and fishing in the South West.

That’s the life.

Arrested development

It’s getting a tad embarrassing how little DevelopmentWA seems to know about what is going on at Elizabeth Quay — despite earning handsomely from selling land at the urban renewal site.

The Bull fondly remembers the State Government agency’s optimism 12 months ago that Victor Goh’s EQWest apartment and hotel project would be finished by the end of 2025. Newsflash — it wasn’t, and still isn’t.

DevWA on Friday seemed authoritative answering questions at a parliamentary inquiry about the ownership structure of EQWest. Until it wasn’t.

One moment Mr Goh was said to be the only shareholder, nek minnit we were told DevWA actually has no oversight over the investors and it was effectively someone else’s job.

The agency then further instilled our confidence by appearing to confuse the meaning of “owner”, or shareholder, with a company’s “directors”. These are not encouraging signs.

We expected a clearer answer given DevWA, which amusingly is a tenant in another building erected by Mr Goh’s empire, would’ve been well aware these questions were coming.

The Bull reckons it’s pretty obvious dozey DevelopmentWA should just ask for the share register of Centure Smith Limited, the foreign-owned holding company behind Mr Goh’s projects and table it in parliament. That wouldn’t completely resolve the questions, but it sure wouldn’t hurt.

Unless of course they can’t get access to the register either, which might ring alarm bells — actually, based on DevWA’s corporate governance record so far, maybe not.