The ANZ seats were presided over by newish chief executive Nuno Matos, whose propensity for tennis spectating in finals week reached Hrdlicka levels.
In the ANZ group was billionaire cardboard tsarina, Fiona Geminder, deputy chair and co-owner of packaging conglomerate Visy.
Larry Kestelman (right) watches the Australian Open men’s final.Credit: Getty Images
Geminder, who was celebrating mum Jeanne Pratt’s 90 birthday today, was not accompanied by her husband Ruffy, the founder of Pact Group, who had posted to LinkedIn that he had a “rupture of the distal rectis femeris tendon with tendon recoil” explaining “… that’s code for sore leg that needed to be stitched together”.
Next to Geminder was son Ben, who doesn’t work in cardboard, but in popcorn, learning the business at the local snack brand Cobs.
ANZ, after a few lean sponsorship years, thundered back to the top tier sponsorship this year, even buying naming rights to the old Court 3, rebranded as the nicely alliterative ANZ Arena.
Other celebrities in its orbit included billionaire Larry Kestelman, the property developer and basketball league owner, and billionaire Justin Hemmes, owner of the Merivale, Australia’s largest hospitality company, which was excluded from this masthead’s Good Food Guide following claims it exploited workers, and ignored claims of sexual harassment.
The company denied the claims. Hemmes, 53, was accompanied by partner Madeline Holtznagel, 28.