James Packer v Urs Schwarzenbach
Two billionaires duke it out in a Zurich courtroom.
As is on the public record, I've been friends with James Packer for years. I tend to avoid writing about him, largely because it's fiendishly difficult to be a clear-eyed public commentator about your own friends – and anyway, he attracts more than enough media coverage without me. However, there are rare occasions when a story comes along that overpowers my capacity for discretion. Today is such a day.
This delicious tale goes all the way back to 1997 – when Packer and Swiss billionaire Urs Schwarzenbach decided to go halves in a ski chalet in the Swiss resort town of Zermatt – and ended last month in a Swiss courtroom.
It was also in 1997 that Schwarzenbach first acquired significant landholdings in New South Wales, buying the 20,000-hectare Windy Station from AACo. Two years later he acquired Redbank, today home to his polo estate Garangula.
Schwarzenbach, who made his fortune in foreign currency exchange, was a long-time friend of Kerry Packer's – both men being enthusiastic polo players and patrons of the aristocratic sport. Indeed, it was Urs who called the ambulance when Kerry had his massive heart attack playing polo at Warwick Farm in 1990.