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While Rupert Murdoch was busy this week settling who takes over his media empire, some of his top executives, past and present, have been preoccupied with reshuffling their property portfolios.
Foxtel’s chief financial officer Stacey Brown and her husband Ben Price have sold their Palm Beach digs for $8.6 million in an off-market deal, settlement documents have revealed.
The views over Whale Beach from the property.Credit:
The couple only purchased the hillside residence in one of the suburb’s dress-circle streets, directly across the road from former trade minister Andrew Robb’s former $4 million weekender, in 2020 for $3.6 million.
Stacey bought the five-bedroom, three-bathroom beach house after she packed up her desk at Rupert Murdoch’s local print empire, and left before the company embarked on large-scale job cuts.
The 52-year-old was the chief financial officer of News Corp Australia from 2017 to 2020. After she left the company, she had a two-year stint as CFO at Laser Clinics Australia before rejoining Murdoch’s stable at Foxtel Group in 2023.
Foxtel Group’s chief financial officer Stacey Brown.Credit:
Tim Reed, managing director of Potentia Capital, one of the country’s most active private equity investors in technology and tech-enabled businesses, has snapped up the northern beaches property with Whale Beach views, without a mortgage, through Peter Robinson of LJ Hooker of Palm Beach, who could not be contacted for comment.
The 55-year-old Northwood local is the president of the Greater Western Sydney Giants board as a proud member of the football club since 2015, as well as a director of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation and Transurban, and past president of the Business Council.
It turns out Brown and Price have traded their coastal retreat for a Southern Highlands acreage, paying $4.02 million with no mortgage for a Burradoo home from legal eagles Paul Reese, principal of Summer Lawyers, and his wife Kathryn, principal at Kingston & Partners.
But Brown and Price haven’t completely farewelled Sydney, as the couple still have a stakehold in the city’s property market, owning two Manly units on the coveted Bower Street, for which they paid a total of $4.1 million, and a Redfern pad to boot.
Another media exec sells
Meanwhile, former Nine chairman David Haslingden and his wife Alexa, Sydney Dance Company director, have finally sold their long-time family home in Vaucluse for $21.5 million.
The Haslingdens have offloaded their award-winning home in Vaucluse.Credit:
It took the pair a second crack at listing and two price cuts worth $3.5 million before landing a buyer.
David, son of late grazier and Olympian Bruce Haslingden, was based in the US for years where he was Fox Networks president before he resigned in 2012 and took up the job of overseeing Nine (publisher of this masthead) the following year until 2016.
Born in New York City, Alexa Haslingden went to Stanford University and has decades of experience in the advertising industry.Credit:
The Cooma-born 64-year-old now heads up RACAT Group, a publishing, production and digital company that runs Junkee, Australian Geographic, game developer and publisher Runaway Play, and Northern Pictures, behind TV shows such as Love on the Spectrum, Hardball and Lukewarm Sex.
Alexa was notable in her own right before marrying David as the daughter of Hugh Cullman, who was the president of American multinational tobacco company Philip Morris. The long-running tobacco executive, who spent decades selling Marlboros to the world, died at 100 years of age in 2023.
The New York City-born 66-year-old was until last year the chairwoman of Lou’s Place at the Marmalade Foundation, a drop-in refuge serving women across Greater Sydney. She is still a director at the foundation as well as a director at RACAT Group.
Private equity firm partner at Five V Capital Srdjan Dangubic and his wife, Zoe, have emerged as the mortgage-free buyers of the Diego Balagna-designed property after the six-bedroom, four-bathroom home settled in Zoe’s name. It sold through Alison Coopes of her eponymous agency, who could not be reached for comment.
The couple are working their way up the property ladder as the Dangubics are trading up from their North Bondi house, for which they paid $4,705,000 in 2019. That’s in addition to the 53-hectare property in Jerrara, known as Jenera Vale, they picked up for $9.3 million, in 2023.
While the Haslingdens were downsizing from the award-winning rebuild, which they purchased for $2.515 million, they still own a waterfront across the road. They purchased that property from Carlene Blumberg, former Woollahra councillor, and her husband Michael, for $10.5 million in 2019.
Downsizing dentist
In the northern beaches, teeth-cleaning mogul Dr Craig Erskine-Smith is bidding farewell to his beloved Balgowlah Heights home with a guide of $9 million to $9.9 million.
The six-bedroom, three-bathroom house is where the dentist conceived many of his inventions, including his multimillion-dollar idea, the interdental brush, more commonly known as – and patented under the name – Piksters.
The Balgowlah Heights home has northeast panaromas over Manly Cove and the ocean.Credit:
He purchased the harbourside block for $855,000 in 1992, the same year he established his company Erskine Dental. The 71-year-old spent years transforming the property into what it is today.
“Without the grounding and facilities and the happiness that place gave me I don’t think I would be where I am now, and I sell it with a very heavy heart,” Erskine-Smith told The Sydney Morning Herald.
While he has since purchased acreage in Belrose for $8.4 million in 2021 and 91 hectares in the Hunter Valley for $2.19 million in the same year, he is hoping to add a city pad to his property portfolio.
The Balgowlah Heights home is selling through Kingsley Looker of Clarke & Humel and is scheduled to go under the hammer on 11 October.
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