Jim Raptis vows to rebuild collapsed property empire

Veteran property developer Jim Raptis has taken responsibility for the collapse of his development company Raptis Group, but has vowed to try and rebuild the company.

Raptis, who was also forced to put his company in administration in the early 1990s, hopes to use a scheme of arrangement to rebuild the company, which was placed in administration on 31 January.

But this will rely on getting the approval of Raptis Group’s 27 creditors, most of which are large finance companies.

“They’ll get their money back, or some of their money back,” Raptis told AAP after yesterday’s creditors’ meeting. “I just don’t know to what degree. It depends on the market when (assets) are sold.”

Raptis says the global financial crisis and subsequent downturn in the property sector bought the group undone.

“The properties that we bought were all good properties in classic positions, and I thought that might have given us a safety net,” he says.

“But because of what has happened with the non-availability of funds for large assets, this has surprised everyone and brought the values down far more than we all thought. The bigger the asset is, the harder it is to sell.”

But Raptis has put his hand up and accepted much of the blame for the collapse. “We bought at the wrong time, we thought there would be a slowdown (in property values), not a cataclysmic decline.

“In hindsight, you can look at things and say we could have made better decisions – you can’t escape from that.”

Administrator Brian Silvia, of BRI Ferrier, yesterday said group had a shortfall of between $50 million and $100 million, depending on how asset sales progress.

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