On Thursday, the Australian stock market made Stephen Marks very rich, when Guzman y Gomez debuted and saw its share price spike to $30, valuing the company at $3 billion plus! But Marks was destined to pull off a play like this given he once worked for Wall Street hedge fund manager Stevie Cohen, who some say was used to create the character of Bobby Axelrod for Stan TV show Billions.
Anyone who has stood on a queue or seen the lines at lunchtime at a Guzman y Gomez shop, or noted their bobbing up in service stations or anywhere people have credit cards at the ready, shouldn’t be surprised that the owners of this business made a fortune yesterday when it listed on the Australian stock market.
The numbers are as tasty as one of the burritos GYG (its new ticker code) have become famous for, but don’t think of the founders as little guys who’ve made good. They’re not! They’re a virtual business celebrity team that was always going to make a motza once it was apparent that consumers of takeaway food loved their stuff.
Sure, extremist foodies might argue the toss, but GYG came to be seen as a healthier alternative to the famous takeaway food products that have dominated since the 1970s here is Australia, which was the decade when we were introduced to McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and KFC.
And not surprisingly in its early days when Marks and his business partners Robert Hazan and Hilton Brett, the business was targeted by the very savvy Peter Ritchie, who founded McDonald's Australia, who was later joined by the likes of Guy Russo (a former Kmart and McDonald's Australia CEO) and then Tom Cowan (of TDM Growth Partners), whose fund took a major holding in GYG in 2018.
And when Hamish Douglas, the founder of Magellan Financial Group, was flying high, he slammed $87 million into GYG in 2020, which attracted some criticism, but later sold Magellan’s stake to Barrenjoey Capital Partners, which Magellan owned 40% of at the time.
In 2022, this stake was sold to Barrenjoey for $140 million during a period when Magellan lost both its market love and its founder!
All up, this was a listing that was always going to do well, though the listing price of $22 was seen by some as excessive. However, this chart proves them wrong, with the share finishing at $30 on day one.

The AFR’s Chanticleer did calculations and said the new listed company has a value equal to Australia’s Domino’s Pizza Enterprises, which is another local listed company. The latter has 736 outlets, while GYG has 340 and the day’s work at the ASX has left Steven Marks with a tidy asset pile valued at $244 million!
One scribe said it took him 18 years to be an overnight success but that only refers to the stock market’s recognition of GYG’s business greatness.
This has been a great business for a long time, with a big fan base of customers, which attracted smart people with deep pockets. Now that’s a recipe for success for any business.
We often make too much of our great sporting heroes, but our country pumps out some sensational entrepreneurs, who bring home the valuable prizes of jobs, profits and taxes, which ultimately bankroll a lot of government spending on many Australians.
And on the subject of entrepreneurs, when I wrote a story on GYG in 2019 and did a podcast with Marks, I noted that Marks had a ‘brush with fame’ in studying at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, which was the alma mater of one President Donald Trump. That university is clearly an entrepreneur-making machine!