On the Switzer Show, Peter Switzer asked Mark Bouris a simple question: who was more imposing, Donald Trump or Kerry Packer? It was not close.
Packer, by a distance.
Bouris met Trump a handful of times but saw Packer almost every month, and where Trump talks, Packer listened. “Kerry doesn’t say much,” Bouris said. “He asks a lot of questions and lets you do all the talking.” Talk for five minutes, and Packer could pick the one sentence, the fifteen seconds, that mattered, then decide whether to bank it or use it against you. Of everyone Bouris has dealt with, he says Packer had the most impact on what he learned, and the highest EQ. “He knew what people wanted.”
He puts three more on a similar page, each for a single quality. The first is James Packer, for quantitative firepower. At his best, Bouris said, James, who has spoken publicly about his personal struggles and is in good shape now, has a memory for numbers and an ability to “prosecute” an idea he believes in like no one else, whether it is Nvidia, casinos or television, and then stop and live his life the next day.
The second is David Gyngell, for instinct.
Gyngell, the son of television pioneer Bruce Gyngell and a former chief executive of Nine, has an uncanny read on what a mass audience wants. Bouris describes him as someone who, he says, has dyslexia and did not finish school, yet reads the room better than anyone. “He’s qualitative and quantitative, a well-honed instinct.”
The third is Nick Politis, for resilience, and Bouris says most people will not even know the name. A Greek migrant who started in a Ford dealership, Politis is the largest shareholder in Eagers Automotive, with a stake of around 28%. He has built it into one of the country’s biggest listed car dealership groups, now turning over more than $10 billion a year, taken a majority stake in one of Canada’s largest dealership groups, CanadaOne Auto, and backed electric vehicles early, becoming BYD’s main retail partner in Australia. In his early 80s, Bouris said, Politis will still fly to China to meet BYD’s boss himself and be back the next day. “He’s achieving more in his 80s than ever.”
The thread Bouris draws is that all four started small. Packer’s Nine, Politis’s dealership, each began as a small business. “We bat way beyond our weight in Australia,” he said, and his worry is that the country will not have big companies if the small ones are not encouraged into business.
“The small businesses we have are going out of business right now at a faster clip than we’ve ever seen in our history,” he said. “That’s bad news, mate.”
Mark Bouris was speaking with Peter Switzer on the Switzer Show.
