https://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/page-13/page-13-time-is-ticking-for-the-house-of-kennedy/news-story/4e6ac84ef99fe7795040e858f7ce957bPage 13: Time is ticking for the house of KennedyAlice Coster, Stephen Drill, Herald Sun
December 7, 2018 8:00pm
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The Sharks are circling the entrepreneurial James Kennedy.
The Cronulla Sharks have not renewed their sponsorship deal with Kennedy, claiming some bills remain unpaid.
The struggling NRL team has claimed that Mr Kennedy’s Bang & Olufsen distribution business has not yet paid its $200,000 sponsorship in full for the 2018 season.
LUXURY EMPIRE CHASED FOR MILLIONS
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Mr Kennedy also has AFL club Richmond on his list of former partners.
The Tigers were paid on their $300,000-a-year deal, which ended in October with the club signing smartphone hardware group Otterbox as its new shorts sponsor this week.
Rob Willis, a spokesman for the Sharks, said its deal with Mr Kennedy’s Emerald Investments company went sour.
James Kennedy with his then-fiancee Jaimee Belle. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis
“The club is obviously disappointed, especially as we delivered on all of our contractual responsibilities,” Willis claimed to Page 13.
Financially ailing Cronulla has been warned by the NRL’s top brass that it will not bail out the club if it goes under.
Richmond confirmed its Kennedy sponsorship was over, but declined to comment further.
It comes as a creditors’ report claims that the company Mr Kennedy was using to sell Bang & Olufsen products in Australia — EGI Audio Visual (Retail) — has significant debts.
According to the report, the company, which has been hit with a $6 million claim from Bang & Olufsen in Denmark, owed more than $250,000 to the Australian Taxation Office and was on a payment plan.
Suppliers, including Optus and AGL, were owed almost $350,000 and landlords at the company’s seven stores were at least $300,000 out of pocket.
The stores have now closed. EGI Audio Visual also owed $143,665 to deposit and lay-by customers and had issued more than $41,000 in credit notes to customers.
Documents also show that the retail store fit-out cost an eye-watering $2.5 million.
The company had $2.6 million worth of stock sitting in warehouses in Epping and Tullamarine and Mascot in Sydney.
Keep an eye out for a cut-price headphones sale.
James and Jaimee Belle Kennedy.
MR KENNEDY’S JET-SET PAST
Rolls-Royces, a former life as a nightclub DJ, a hunger for success and a hankering for a private jet. Meet James Kennedy, in his own words.
A leaked “corporate portfolio” to Page 13 sheds more light on the man behind the embattled luxury retailer.
Mr Kennedy, as the 39-year-old prefers to be called (some say ‘insists’) grew up in a world of luxury overseen by his Holocaust survivor father Louis and mother Martha, who created LK Jewellery.
“I’ve grown up in the space of luxury, holidays at five-star hotels, dropped off at school in Rolls- Royces,” Mr Kennedy writes.
“Dad always had his Rolls-Royce parked out on the street in the taxi stand, in front of the store in Double Bay; every day he would get a ticket and every day he wouldn’t care.”
Like father, like son.
James Kennedy, with Jaimee Belle-Kennedy, admits to loving the luxury way of life. Picture: Aaron Francis
Mr Kennedy said Kerry Packer and Lloyd Williams approached his parents to open a store in Crown, “and I guess the rest is history”.
An eight-year stint as a “professional DJ” on the Sydney strip followed before Mr Kennedy found himself in the world of finance, taking a job at none other than disgraced businessman Rene Rivkin’s investment advice rag, the Rivkin Report.
Fast-forward and Mr Kennedy talks a tale of two cities, after building Kennedy in Sydney and Melbourne following his father’s death.
“Overall the travel is not so bad — until the day comes and I can afford to buy my own private jet,” he muses.
“I do love nice things, the luxury way of life,” Mr Kennedy wrote.
Tick, tick, tick.
