ROGER HUSSEY: Holmes a Court’s inner circle as the WA businessman began his rise to power

ROGER Hussey was one of a band of smart go-getters pulled into Robert Holmes a Court’s inner circle as the WA businessman began his rise to power.

Mr Hussey, who forged his own prominent business career during the 1980s before retreating from the limelight, had joined Mr Holmes a Court’s Bell Group in 1975 after three years in a marketing job at Shell.

Seven years earlier, the new Floreat Park law graduate had won two scholarships, one to Canada’s Alberta University, the other — sponsored by Shell — to Oxford. He chose politics and economics at Oxford.

Having studied with Mr Holmes a Court at the University of WA, he was hired into a finance and investment role at Bell, working on unsuccessful takeover bids for Ansett and TNT late in his tenure.

One insider at the time yesterday recalled a self-confident, academically minded colleague who “didn’t have a strong commercial bias, that came later”.

Leaving Bell in 1979, Mr Hussey headed a leasing and insurance broking business before founding an investment company, Century Holdings, one of the first companies on Perth’s now defunct second-board market.

Taking stakes in various businesses, including Toms Tyres, he developed a prowess for turning around ailing companies, a reputation which supported a growing public profile as an emerging business talent.

Perth businessman John Poynton, who partnered Mr Hussey in a short-lived corporate advisory business in the early 1990s, remembers him as “quirky” and “sharp as a tack”, but also very private.

Source: Phuket parasailing death: Perth businessman Roger Hussey remembered | Perth Now