Pub industry trailblazer Fraser Short’s group The Sydney Collective has fallen into administration, said to owe around $6 million in tax and to creditors.
The news broke late December – less than a year after TSC sold its share in five pubs, including the acclaimed Watsons Bay Hotel, to venture partners Laundy Hotels, headed by Arthur Laundy, for around $150 million.
Short, 48, told PubTIC at the time that “a bit of time to not run 1200 staff and do 80-hour weeks is on the cards for me” and spoke of the early passing of his father at age 60.
The late and well-known Warwick Short owned and operated pubs including the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel, Newtown’s The Marlborough, Randwick’s The Racecourse Hotel, and The Stoned Crow in Crows Nest.
Fraser grew up around hotels, but didn’t see himself following in the industry and instead studied interior design, until “things changed” and he entered the family business.
One of his first ventures was Cargo Bar in Darling Harbour, which he launched at age 25, just before the Sydney Olympics in 2000, in partnership with parents Warwick and Ros. Cargo Bar became one of the most popular venues in the heart of Sydney, and was soon joined by the creation of nearby Bungalow 8 and The Loft.
In 2012 Short formed The Sydney Collective, in which he is sole director, purchasing pubs in partnership with the Laundys.
Sale to the Laundys was accompanied by the offloading of other TSC venues, including the formerly highly successful The Morrison, which Short created out of dive bar the Brooklyn Hotel in 2013.
But after more than a decade entertaining Sydney, TSC is now in the hands of administrator Adam Farnsworth of Farnsworth Carson.
A report lodged with ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission) details the Australian Taxation Office is owed $1.08 million, assorted trade creditors are owed nearly $300k, and the largest amount, $4.41 million, is owed to an entity linked to the Short family – the Warwick and Yates Trust.
The document states that The Sydney Collective lists sole assets of a $70k Tesla X, parked at Short’s $9 million Vaucluse home, and a trading account containing only $500.
Sources have suggested to PubTIC that the TSC head office was something of a “wolf of Wall Street” of fast times and “regular” daytime partying, and that the receivership is largely a result of “bad deals made in bad faith” by management at TSC since Short’s departure earlier in the year.
Former TSC execs Brett Sergeant and James Wicks proved to be the purchasers of Short’s The Morrison, and nearby Circular Quay restaurant Whalebridge, under their new Sunday Co. banner, which Sergeant had been planning for some time.
Fraser Short has declined to comment on TSC entering administration.
