Billionaire Gretel Packer moves to safeguard daughter’s inheritance with strict prenup

Proud mother-of-the-bride Gretel Packer has a reputation for being a sentimental softie when it comes to preserving her parents’ legacies.

When it comes to prenups, not so much.

After two marriages – her first to British financier Nicholas Barham lasted eight years, while her second to Avalon hippie Shane Murray struggled to make three – the fiercely protective Packer is understood to have left nothing to chance concerning her only daughter Francesca Packer Barham’s marriage to failed wellness entrepreneur Robert Bates.

According to well-placed sources, the devoted mother-of-three, who has proven herself a canny investor after amassing a personal fortune approaching $3 billion, has had more than a passing hand in helping to draft the prenuptial agreement that will safeguard her daughter’s future inheritance, should Francesca’s marriage to Bates fail.

It had been the dying wish of Gretel’s father, media magnate Kerry Packer – that his only daughter set aside her romantic nature in 2004 and protect herself financially by insisting her then-fiance, self-styled spiritual guru Murray, sign one.

It would take years – and a battle that finally ended in 2010 – before Gretel’s lawyers reached a settlement with Murray that finally made him a footnote to her life.

At the time, that settlement was put at around $5 million, though the precise amount has never been made public.

Regardless, it was sufficient to buy Murray an apartment valued at $1.3 million in Sydney’s leafy Rose Bay, probably too close for Packer, who would raise her children just streets away in the next suburb, and an investment property.

Generally speaking, prenups today can be structured in such a way that new groom Bates may be entitled to an amount for every year the couple remain together. For example, $1 million a year – or given a sum after they’ve celebrated a milestone anniversary, perhaps $5 million after five years, or similar.

The birth of any children – and Francesca is said to be eager to have children – may trigger other provisions, such as a bonus for each child born of the union.

In the wash-up of the couple’s wedding held at NSW family property Ellerston near Scone on Wednesday, talk has turned to where the couple will settle down.

This follows the $27 million sale of Packer Barham’s Darlinghurst Horizon Tower apartment last year.

A ready and convenient solution might be the $60 million house mother Gretel purchased before Christmas right next door to her own Bellevue Hill mansion.

That would be perfectly private and protected and preserve what is already a tight mother-daughter bond.

TV veterans feather retirement nests

The days of million-dollar TV salaries are over, prompting highly paid news personalities and execs to consolidate their wealth ahead of earlier-than-expected retirements and amid declining demand for their services.

During the past seven months, against a backdrop of plummeting TV revenues, some of television’s biggest names have offloaded homes to capitalise on this still-buoyant real estate market.

This week, one-time breakfast show host Samantha Armytage sold her house in Moss Vale in the NSW Southern Highlands.

The sale, for $2.1 to $2.3 million, came weeks after Armytage sold a Hyams Beach home on the NSW South Coast in March for $2.75 million.

With lucrative on-screen jobs fast drying up in television, former Seven star Armytage, who took a pay cut to sign with Nine in 2024 for a stint hosting The Golden Bachelor, looks to be building a war chest in anticipation of the uncertain years ahead.

The presenter, who turns 50 in September, isn’t the only former breakfast television identity playing the real estate market.

Ex-Today show anchor Lisa Wilkinson sold the Cremorne family home she shared with media writer husband Peter FitzSimons in October for an undisclosed sum after going to market with$23 million expectations.

The couple then swiftly picked up a waterfront $15 million penthouse apartment with harbour views in nearby Mosman in November.

Former ABC Breakfast host Michael Rowland also put the family home on the market last spring before selling it in November.

After 39 years at the national broadcaster, Rowland, 57, retired in February – 14 months after stepping down from ABC Breakfast in what was widely seen as an internal push for generational change.

Rowland’s four-bedroom family home in Yarraville, Melbourne, ended up selling for $2.47 million, with those funds subsequently financing he and wife Nicki’s midlife tree-change.

The couple now call Tewantin, near Noosa, home.

Seven’s prime-time newsreader Mark Ferguson also consolidated his property investments in October with the sale of a family farm near Crookwell in the Southern Tablelands for $8.5 million.

That sale came just months before Ferguson had his newsreading shifts at Seven cut back, after 17 years, to four nights a week in line with widespread pay cuts being handed out across the board at Seven.

Ferguson and wife Jayne also own a terrace in Paddington that they originally picked up for $3.2 million in 2014, the year his career was on the upswing after he was promoted to the coveted role of Seven’s prime-time Sydney newsreader.

That was also the year the couple bought the now divested 777 hectare cattle property.

Nine’s long-time former national director of news Darren Wick is the latest to put his home on the market.

Wick’s three-bedroom, two-bathroom oceanfront apartment at Narrabeen Beach was advertised last month.

Featuring 180 degree views and a beachside swimming pool, the property goes to auction next week with expectations in the mid $3 million range.

After three decades at Nine, Wick left the broadcaster in March 2024.

A month later, as brutal cost cutting hit rival broadcaster Seven, Wick’s Seven news counterpart Craig McPherson pulled the plug on his 25-year TV career.

Having invested shrewdly with TV star wife Sonia Kruger in the affluent Sydney suburb of Mosman years earlier – and undertaken a lavish million-dollar renovation of the family home – McPherson would replace long days at Seven’s Eveleigh bunker with shorter ones as a burgeoning project manager and real estate prospector.

Having tripled their money buying, renovating and selling their first Mosman home which they sold at the start of 2025 for about $20 million, McPherson and Kruger – the highly prized and paid host of Seven’s The Voice, Dancing with the Stars, Big Brother and Holey Moley – splashed out $16 million on a Balmoral Slopes knockdown with gun-barrel views of North Head.

Father of seven McPherson has spent the past year in semi-retirement working with architects and fending off neighbour complaints concerning the construction of a $7 million, four-storey mansion (with two swimming pools) – the future sale of which, pending 60-year-old Kruger’s own future, should guarantee the couple a very comfortable retirement.

SCM incoming chair Dyson rose from ashes of ugly scandal

The appointment of incoming chair Teresa Dyson at Southern Cross Media (SCM) and Seven West Media is significant for a number of reasons.

Dyson is to replace outgoing chair Heith Mackay-Cruise who finishes up at the end of June, as was announced this week.

A long-time Seven West Media board member, Dyson is a tax lawyer who was previously a partner at accounting firm Deloitte.

She is described by those who’ve had dealings with her as being “straight as a die” and “trustworthy”.

The Brisbane-based lawyer was in 2011 named Woman Lawyer of the Year by the Women Lawyers Association of Queensland. She has also served as a director of Energy Queensland Ltd, Energy Super, Power & Water Corp (NT) and the Gold Coast Hospital and Health Board and advised government.

Critically, she joined Seven’s board in 2017 following the departure of two female board directors.

Those directors were Michelle Deaker and Sheila McGregor.

McGregor departed in February 2017 amid the network scandal that engulfed then-Seven CEO Tim Worner following this reporter’s revelations about the CEO’s fling with company PA Amber Harrison.

Deaker followed that same year.

When Dyson was appointed, she became the only woman on Seven’s 10-person board, a fact that jarred with then-chairman Stokes’s comments that Seven was built on a “culture of inclusion and respect”.

In 2015, the Australian Council of Superannuation had put Stokes’ Seven on notice for having too few women on its board.

Dyson, whose appointment at SCM has been interpreted by some as a swing back to Stokes control, has said she actively supports and promotes equity and diversity in leadership.

The long-suffering women at Southern Cross/Seven will be watching closely to check she’s good to her word.