Laundy's feud gets an airing
Peter de Angelis. Photo: Wesley Lonergan
As family feuds go, they don't get much bigger than the one Sydney's powerful pub barons, the Laundys, have been fighting for the past 18 months.
Last weekend that bad blood spilled into public view when the Point Piper home of the late family matriarch, Veronica Laundy, went up for auction.
On one side of the room sat Arthur Laundy, Veronica's 76-year-old son, who BRW estimated to be worth $306 million in its latest Rich List.
The auction at 9/45 Wolseley Road, Point Piper. Photo: Christopher Pearce
A few metres away, with his back firmly facing Laundy, sat his nephew, Peter De Angelis, another publican, the son of Arthur Laundy's sister Robyn De Angelis.
Before long it soon became clear that Laundy and his nephew were bidding against each other for the property, though it was De Angelis who came out of the auction victorious, paying $4.1 million – a staggering $1million over the reserve price.
"The property holds great sentimental value for my mother, as it is where she grew up and that is why we chose, as a family, to buy it," De Angelis later told PS, declining to comment on out-bidding his uncle.
Pub baron Arthur Laundy. Photo: Peter Morris
Similarly Laundy was circumspect about commenting on his sister's family buying the property, telling PS: "The proceeds of the sale go to the estate which is to be shared between my sister and I."
The home last traded in 1968, after it was bought off the plan for $93,750 by Veronica and Arthur Laundy Senior, the founder of the Laundy Hotel Group
A year ago Arthur Laundy junior settled a dispute with his sister, Robyn De Angelis, over amendments to their mother's will shortly before she died.
De Angelis was suing her brother over changes to their mother's will made around 12 weeks before her death in 2012, aged 97, which she alleged deprived her of a quarter of around $30 million in retained earnings from the Twin Willows Hotel at Bass Hill.
The hotel is one of more than 10 owned by the Laundy group and is among the best gaming earners in NSW.
De Angelis, who also separately owns several hotels, including the Picton Hotel, said in a written statement following the hearing that she brought the proceedings to investigate the circumstances in which her mother apparently changed her will by signing a codicil shortly before her death in 2012.
"Her original will had been in place for many years without change and divided her estate equally between my brother and I," she says. "My brother has abandoned his reliance on the codicil and as a result my mother's original will stands."
The companies holding the hotel's assets and retained earnings were placed under a court-appointed executor with shares to be distributed evenly between the siblings.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald - 5th June 2015
