Rich Listers enjoy $410 million pay day for VIP Petfoods; Melbourne and Sydney auction bonanza: Midday Roundup

Rich List regulars Tony and Christina Quinn are set to become even wealthier, signing a $410 million deal to sell their premium chilled pet food business VIP Petfoods to Quadrant Private Equity.

Fairfax reports the private equity film will purchase the Yatala-based business with the aim of growing its international profile.

The Gold Coast couple is believed to be reinvesting some of the cash from the sale back into the business, which employs 600 staff and produces 150,000 tonnes of pet food each year, to retain a minority stake.

Tony Quinn, who started the business with his wife in 1994, told Fairfax the couple had built VIP Petfoods “up from nothing” to the 15th biggest pet food producer in the world.  

“It was tough at first but as you know, the harder you work, the luckier you become,” Quinn said.

The Quinns still own iconic chocolate manufacturer Darrell Lea, which they bought in 2012 after saving it from administration.

Melbourne and Sydney auction bonanza

The country’s two biggest auction cities have recorded yet another week of strong auction clearances, contributing to the 10th week in a row where the national clearance rate has been above 77%, according to RP Data.

The solid results come despite a slight increase in volumes, with Sydney notching an 86.5% clearance on 1120 homes under the hammer this weekend and Melbourne scoring 78.3% off 1221 properties.

In the Sydney suburb of West Ryde, a four-bedroom house at 13 Gaza Road that the agent referred to as having “a lot of negatives” still sold for $630,000 more than its reserve, at $1,830,000, according to Domian.

The coming weekend is expected to be relatively quiet compared with recent market action, with the Queen’s Birthday long weekend in both Victoria and New South Wales affecting auction volumes.

Shares down

Local shares are in the red this morning, after a strong rally last Friday.

“The stock market starts a fresh week with a soft lead from international markets and plenty of reason to be cautious as the next milestone for the Greek debt saga draws near and a lot of potentially significant economic data is slated for release,” said Ric Spooner, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, in a statement.

“Friday’s strong rally in the Australian market sets up an interesting dynamic for today’s trading. On the surface of it, weaker US markets appear to have wrong-footed local investors setting up potential for our market to retreat more than expected today,” Spooner continued.

“However, the sort of buying momentum seen on Friday often follows through for a while. This creates the possibility that far from being wrong-footed it’s also possible that latent buying for Australian stocks will be triggered again today.

The S&P/ASX200 benchmark was down 82.8 points to 5694.4 points at 12:15pm AEST. On Friday, the Dow Jones closed down 0.64%, falling 115.44 points to 18,010.7 points.