Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size It was September 2023 and Simon Raftery was desperate for money.
Raftery had helped raise almost $200 million from private lenders and investors to re-establish the long-closed Wilkie Creek coal mine in south-west Queensland. But now, less than six months since the mine had restarted, he was on the phone chasing another $1 million. Raftery, a smooth-talking, opportunistic young man, was used to wrangling money.
He ran an advisory and investment firm, called Remagen, which operated in the booming but opaque private credit industry. It raised money from rich investors and then lent it at eye-watering interest rates to distressed small and medium-sized companies that couldn't get bank loans. For some of the past decade, Remagen was very successful, managing hundreds of millions in investor funds.
Raftery was doing so well he even bought himself a luxury Sydney waterfront home, with a private jetty, for $7.6 million. But more recently, Remagen had run into trouble after Raftery overextended himself.
He had expanded Remagen into bigger and bigger loans and also tricky private equity deals, some of which ended badly. Two national food companies of which Raftery was a director, Aussie Frozen Fruit and the In2Food group, which had supplied major supermarkets and cruise ships, had failed, owing about $80 million. Tens of millions of dollars of Remagen investor funds, and Raftery's own money, were torched in those companies and also in other poorly performing deals in the mining industry.
Raftery and Remagen had managed money for global institutions and ultra-high-net-worth families from Australia and Asia. Among them were well-known names such as BlackRock, former Macquarie chief executive Tony Berg, and also Irene Lee, who sits on the board of e-commerce giant..
. Anne Hyland.
