Thread: Alan Bond dead at 77

"Alan Bond, the one-time business giant, America’s Cup hero and convicted fraudster, has died in a Perth hospital three days after surgery to replace a heart valve and repair two others. The 77-year-old had been in a critical condition at Fiona Stanley Hospital and died this morning, his family announced this morning in Western Australia.

OBITUARY: Alan Bond, the risk-taking salesman, by Paul Barry

“Dad passed away this morning about an hour ago. His body finally gave out after heroic efforts of everyone involved here at the Intensive Care Unit at Fiona Stanley Hospital,” his family said.
Outside the hospital, Mr Bond’s son John said he never regained consciousness after his surgery.
Bob Hawke, who was prime minister at the time of the 1983 America’s Cup, said Australia’s victory over the US in the yacht race, bankrolled by Mr Bond, lifted the spirits of the nation.
“It’s impossible to overstate just how much he lifted the spirits of Australia,” Mr Hawke told reporters in Sydney.
“The spirits of Australia were low in the early 1980s. We had gone through bad economic times. The country was badly divided. But we united around this marvellous historic victory.”
Mr Hawke acknowledged that Mr Bond had caused harm to a lot of people in his fraudulent business dealings that resulted in a four-year jail sentence.
“But on balance, he’ll always rank remarkably high for the contribution he made to Australia.”
The tycoon was one of Australia’s most dominant business figures of the 1980s when his global empire spanned media, brewing, resources and property assets worth billions of dollars.
Mr Bond bankrolled the America’s Cup victory, stripping the New York Yacht Club of the trophy it held for 132 years.
But he was later jailed for Australia’s biggest corporate fraud. He pleaded guilty of defrauding Bell Resources of $1.2 billion".


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Already posted in famous people dead thread.

been dead for a week.

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