December 18, 2005
Battles following the boom times have left him scarred, but Diamond Joe is back in the hunt, writes Christopher Webb.
Joseph Gutnick is back doing what he reckons he does best: searching for gold, diamonds and other minerals. But the stockmarket isn't that confident about his prospects.
His five companies are languishing down at the penny-end of the stockmarket; the three local ones, which recently held their annual meetings - Great Gold Mines, Quantum Resources and Astro Diamond Mines - are in total valued at $31 million. The most expensive of them fetches five cents.
A far cry from the days when Mr Gutnick was presiding over companies valued by the market at $3 billion or so.
And it's not only the corporate side of his life that has changed. In boom times he gave away big money to Jewish causes, some say at least $30 million. Now he says that "I'm not giving the money I used to give." Why not? "Because I haven't got it."
And then there have been the skirmishes, often bitter skirmishes; with his sister over money, with Dow Jones over defamation, with Anaconda Nickel, with the footy club, and with his former stockbroker mate, Levi Mochkin.
While those battles are over - excepting continuing litigation with Mr Mochkin - and he won most of them, they have left lasting scars.
Mr Gutnick says the court cases severely affected the way he operated.
"That's probably the reason why I didn't function properly over the last three or four years.
"Court cases totally absorb your thoughts and it's very hard to function properly while you're going through lots of court cases."
He says the Dow Jones court case, where he sued the American company for defamation, was the most traumatic of his battles "because they threw so much filth at me".
He won that case. And he won a court battle with his sister, Pnina Feldman, but it lingers. "We don't talk to each other. We talked when my father (Rabbi Chaim Gutnick) passed away, we mourned together. I certainly don't want to part forever with my sister.
"If I hadn't needed the money, I wouldn't have gone through the whole trauma, but $5 million in anyone's book is big money, especially if you'd lost the paper empire."
His experience with the Melbourne Football Club also has a touch of unfinished business about it.
"Well, I enjoyed it very much. It was very emotionally draining; winning, losing, the ups and downs, the highs and lows of football. I wouldn't like to go through it again," he says.
"I was bitter at the time but not any more. There has been a lot of speculation about it - whether I was divisive or whether the bulk of the club were anti-Semitic.
"The rank-and-file supporters were behind me," he says. He wonders whether he was only tolerated because he gave $2.7 million to the club and whether it was a case of "boom, boot him out".
Mr Gutnick says he would like to get involved with the club again "on sort of an honorary basis or on an advisory board or whatever it may be . . . patron, but not whilst the existing board is there.
"I've got no gripes with the players. I enjoyed it there, they're still my team, I still follow it."
While he is happy to talk about the past, it is the future where he talks like the old Joseph Gutnick, brimming with confidence about mineral discoveries and gold price.
Israel also gets him going. "I'm still friendly with Benjamin Netanyahu. He will probably win the Likud party primaries," he says.
"I'm very much bewildered with the actions of Ariel Sharon who was a builder of the settlements. He was the one who took me to Hebron. Here he is dismantling the settlements he established. He's not the same Ariel I knew. He's a different man. He wants to go down in history as a man of peace, not a warrior."
Mr Gutnick says Mr Sharon's children are "lefties" and that his late wife "very much controlled him (and) he wouldn't get out of line".
"I have a personal responsibility to the Rebbe about Israel. He appointed me his personal emissary and that will go on whatever happens."
Meanwhile, Mr Gutnick is still looking for gold, diamonds and other minerals. "I haven't stopped. Very much so. I've got my son (Mordechai) now with me.
"The appetite is still there and the opportunities are still there. I've still got a strong and absolute conviction to validate that which the Rebbe said, that I'd find diamonds. I'm still chasing that dream.
"We are just touching the surface of some of the leases we've got and we're starting to explore again and raise money. "They are very prospective leases that we've acquired over the last 10 years that will be explored and new deposits found."
In the good old days, Mr Gutnick could raise tens of millions for his mining companies in one hit. But these are different times. "Joe, who?" responds one stockbroker when asked whether he still follows Mr Gutnick's stocks.
He still raises money, but it comes in smaller dollops; in the past year or so he has raised about $11 million from punters on these shores.
He reports that he has other business interests, including real estate and some businesses "where I'm sort of a silent partner. If any of them do well, I'm sure people will find out," he says.
"People don't stop, who do you know who stops? I've still got something to prove. I want to do well and not have a big staff. One of my mistakes was having too big a staff," he says. He now has nine full-time employees.
Another mistake he says he made was selling assets when the market was down. He mentions Great Central Mines, which was taken over by Normandy Mining.
"This time I'll be smarter. I was overly ambitious to build plants myself. I've been there, done that. I'm probably more conservative now. I wouldn't make that mistake again.
"This time, if I made a discovery, I'd sell the deposit to a major (company) and keep some kind of residual interest."
Gold seems to run in this man's veins. He's obsessed with it. "Gold is my lifeline, that is where I made my wealth. The Rebbe said I'd find lots of gold. So that's my beginning and it will be my end. Gold."
Ask him whether he was interested in buying The Jerusalem Post and he says dismissively, "I'm only interested in gold."
"I hope my grandchildren will be following in my footsteps and finding lots of gold deposits in Australia," he says.
And it might not be his grandchildren who do the discovering. Mordechai Gutnick, 27, who is on the Great Gold Mines, Quantum and Astro boards, makes it clear that he, too, has the exploration bug.
"We're sticking holes in the ground," he says, on the way out of one of the annual meetings.
Close your eyes and it could be the old man talking.
The reporter has an interest in Astro options.
Battles following the boom times have left him scarred, but Diamond Joe is back in the hunt, writes Christopher Webb.
Joseph Gutnick is back doing what he reckons he does best: searching for gold, diamonds and other minerals. But the stockmarket isn't that confident about his prospects.
His five companies are languishing down at the penny-end of the stockmarket; the three local ones, which recently held their annual meetings - Great Gold Mines, Quantum Resources and Astro Diamond Mines - are in total valued at $31 million. The most expensive of them fetches five cents.
A far cry from the days when Mr Gutnick was presiding over companies valued by the market at $3 billion or so.
And it's not only the corporate side of his life that has changed. In boom times he gave away big money to Jewish causes, some say at least $30 million. Now he says that "I'm not giving the money I used to give." Why not? "Because I haven't got it."
And then there have been the skirmishes, often bitter skirmishes; with his sister over money, with Dow Jones over defamation, with Anaconda Nickel, with the footy club, and with his former stockbroker mate, Levi Mochkin.
While those battles are over - excepting continuing litigation with Mr Mochkin - and he won most of them, they have left lasting scars.
Mr Gutnick says the court cases severely affected the way he operated.
"That's probably the reason why I didn't function properly over the last three or four years.
"Court cases totally absorb your thoughts and it's very hard to function properly while you're going through lots of court cases."
He says the Dow Jones court case, where he sued the American company for defamation, was the most traumatic of his battles "because they threw so much filth at me".
He won that case. And he won a court battle with his sister, Pnina Feldman, but it lingers. "We don't talk to each other. We talked when my father (Rabbi Chaim Gutnick) passed away, we mourned together. I certainly don't want to part forever with my sister.
"If I hadn't needed the money, I wouldn't have gone through the whole trauma, but $5 million in anyone's book is big money, especially if you'd lost the paper empire."
His experience with the Melbourne Football Club also has a touch of unfinished business about it.
"Well, I enjoyed it very much. It was very emotionally draining; winning, losing, the ups and downs, the highs and lows of football. I wouldn't like to go through it again," he says.
"I was bitter at the time but not any more. There has been a lot of speculation about it - whether I was divisive or whether the bulk of the club were anti-Semitic.
"The rank-and-file supporters were behind me," he says. He wonders whether he was only tolerated because he gave $2.7 million to the club and whether it was a case of "boom, boot him out".
Mr Gutnick says he would like to get involved with the club again "on sort of an honorary basis or on an advisory board or whatever it may be . . . patron, but not whilst the existing board is there.
"I've got no gripes with the players. I enjoyed it there, they're still my team, I still follow it."
While he is happy to talk about the past, it is the future where he talks like the old Joseph Gutnick, brimming with confidence about mineral discoveries and gold price.
Israel also gets him going. "I'm still friendly with Benjamin Netanyahu. He will probably win the Likud party primaries," he says.
"I'm very much bewildered with the actions of Ariel Sharon who was a builder of the settlements. He was the one who took me to Hebron. Here he is dismantling the settlements he established. He's not the same Ariel I knew. He's a different man. He wants to go down in history as a man of peace, not a warrior."
Mr Gutnick says Mr Sharon's children are "lefties" and that his late wife "very much controlled him (and) he wouldn't get out of line".
"I have a personal responsibility to the Rebbe about Israel. He appointed me his personal emissary and that will go on whatever happens."
Meanwhile, Mr Gutnick is still looking for gold, diamonds and other minerals. "I haven't stopped. Very much so. I've got my son (Mordechai) now with me.
"The appetite is still there and the opportunities are still there. I've still got a strong and absolute conviction to validate that which the Rebbe said, that I'd find diamonds. I'm still chasing that dream.
"We are just touching the surface of some of the leases we've got and we're starting to explore again and raise money. "They are very prospective leases that we've acquired over the last 10 years that will be explored and new deposits found."
In the good old days, Mr Gutnick could raise tens of millions for his mining companies in one hit. But these are different times. "Joe, who?" responds one stockbroker when asked whether he still follows Mr Gutnick's stocks.
He still raises money, but it comes in smaller dollops; in the past year or so he has raised about $11 million from punters on these shores.
He reports that he has other business interests, including real estate and some businesses "where I'm sort of a silent partner. If any of them do well, I'm sure people will find out," he says.
"People don't stop, who do you know who stops? I've still got something to prove. I want to do well and not have a big staff. One of my mistakes was having too big a staff," he says. He now has nine full-time employees.
Another mistake he says he made was selling assets when the market was down. He mentions Great Central Mines, which was taken over by Normandy Mining.
"This time I'll be smarter. I was overly ambitious to build plants myself. I've been there, done that. I'm probably more conservative now. I wouldn't make that mistake again.
"This time, if I made a discovery, I'd sell the deposit to a major (company) and keep some kind of residual interest."
Gold seems to run in this man's veins. He's obsessed with it. "Gold is my lifeline, that is where I made my wealth. The Rebbe said I'd find lots of gold. So that's my beginning and it will be my end. Gold."
Ask him whether he was interested in buying The Jerusalem Post and he says dismissively, "I'm only interested in gold."
"I hope my grandchildren will be following in my footsteps and finding lots of gold deposits in Australia," he says.
And it might not be his grandchildren who do the discovering. Mordechai Gutnick, 27, who is on the Great Gold Mines, Quantum and Astro boards, makes it clear that he, too, has the exploration bug.
"We're sticking holes in the ground," he says, on the way out of one of the annual meetings.
Close your eyes and it could be the old man talking.
The reporter has an interest in Astro options.
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