Monday, September 2, 2013

Can Therese Rein survive a politically dead Kevin?

 Therese Rein had this to say on Twitter last night:

Thérèse Rein @Therese_Rein


RT @macuser2323: @KRuddMP you were bloody brilliant tonight Kevin. You in my opinion definitely deserve another term.

 The real question: Can Therese Rein survive once Kevin is completely and utterly without influence, and prospects, as he is likely to be come the evening of 7 September 2013?

The following which I raised 5 years ago remains unanswered:

Sunday, April 27, 2008


Who guaranteed Therese Rein and Kevin Rudd's loan facilities?

In May 2007 the Sun Herald reported, in a story about Therese Rein and Kevin Rudd's business interest:

....she borrowed AUD 7800 against their Brisbane home and set up Therese Rein and Associates, trading as WorkDirections Australia.

"Well, we've struggled with our mortgage and this has been a long journey," she says. "What my parents gave me was a good education and the belief that you can do anything. They didn't give me money. When we started the business, we had a mortgage and we borrowed against the equity in the house. That only stopped ... a few years ago now." (Source:Rein & shine,By Peter Wilmoth
27 May 2007,Sun Herald)

However ,an ASIC search obtained at that time showed Rein's company was subject to a charge -fixed and floating -in favour of Westpac since 1990.That loan appears to have been refinanced since then , most recently with HSBC.
In other words, Rudd-Rein's business was not financed by a mere mortgage over the family home-other loans were also required,and these were secured over the business , NOT the family home.

Then, on 28 April 2008, Glen Milne of the Sunday Telegraph reported:
A COMPANY controlled by Kevin Rudd's wife Therese Rein took out a AUD 75million overdraft while the Prime Minister's office claimed the business was inactive.
It emerged two weeks ago that Mr Rudd had not declared the activities of one of his wife's companies -- Invisage Australia -- on a Parliamentary pecuniary interests register....The documents show that on March 30 of that year the company co-signed a bank loan facility -- essentially an overdraft -- with the HSBC bank for AUD 75 million.

This was in addition to an earlier loan taken out with Westpac on May 15, 2003 for AUD 120 million. The first loan was discharged on March 29, 2007.
The PM claimed that the company, which was in receipt of Federal Government funding over four years worth AUD 160,000, had been ``inactive'' since 2006.

But documents obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show that Invisage Australia, owned by the holding company Ingeus that is controlled by Mr Rudd's wife, was still active in 2007.

(Rudd, Rein and $75m
GLENN MILNE,27 April 2008
Sunday Telegraph)


I have previously written on Invisage on this blog:
http://gsahathevan.blogspot.com/2008/04/therese-reins-invisage-throws-light-on.html
I showed from their own website (now in Archives) that the company was a provider of training services. Hence it is not likely to have had assets sufficient to secure an AUD 120 million loan, or an AUD 85 million overdraft facility. In addition, Rudd himself said the company was inactive. If these financing facilities were required for the expansion of Ingeus, the parent company, the facilities would have been in the name of Ingeus which MAY have had the resources on which to secure the above facilities.

The entire Ingeus Group is said to have "global revenue topping $170 million".
(http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rudds-wife-to-run-the-empire--her-own/2007/04/23/1177180569463.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1)
Hence, it could be argued that Westpac and HSBC were prepared to advance hundreds of millions in loans against the company's revenue. Service providers such as Ingeus are not likely to have much in assets-hence the company's revenue would have had to be the main source of security for the loans.
However, it is likely that the banks would have required further security, probably in the form of some type of guarantee from a party external to the business. Unless the Rudd's have some other asset base they are not telling us about, the guarantees would have to be provided by some party or parties friendly to the Rudds.

In short; Rein can no longer expect us to believe that has grown her company on the back of AUD 7,800 loan secured on a second mortgage over the family home.
posted by ganesh sahathevan @ 4:40 PM

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