Craig Gore owes everyone

A tearful Craig Gore (a former Champ Car team sponsor with Aussie Vineyards) was inducted into the Order of the White Shoe yesterday after managing to get enough of his 92 creditors to agree to the largest personal insolvency agreement in Australian history.

Creditors of the Gold Coast businessman yesterday approved the proposal that will see Gore (aka Jackson Morgan-Phoenix) repay $3.3 million of a $495 million debt over three years.

''It is a win, win,'' Gore's trustee, Max Prentice, from BPS Recovery, said of the win, win, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss. Gore has guaranteed to pay his creditors a return of at least 0.66¢ in the dollar . Only eight creditors voted against the agreement.

As a sweetener, creditors will get a 30 per cent stake in a company through which Gore will be required to conduct all of his business activities for the next three years.

It is not the first time that Gore, described by the Gold Coast Bulletin as ''tenacious'', has been in financial trouble. The 43-year-old former chair of the Atkinson Gore Group was a bankrupt from 1992 to 1999.

Among Gore's few remaining assets are a bust of the French impressionist painter Renoir that was purchased for £60,000 ($97,000), three watches valued at $7200, minus $2.1 million in several bank accounts, three cars including a 1969 Cadillac DeVille and a worthless investment in a Gunns timber plantation project.

COUNTING COSTS

The largest creditor to be stung from exposure to Gore is the City Pacific-founded First Mortgage Fund (FMF). It holds the savings of thousands of retirees and is owed $193.8 million.

The chief executive of the fund manager Balmain Trilogy, Andrew Griffin said: ''Any recoveries from Gore as a guarantor would have been a bonus for us.''

The second-largest creditor is the British billionaire and financial backer of conservative political causes, Lord Michael Ashcroft, whose Mayfair Limited is owed $138 million. Ashcroft was once rumored with Gore to be eyeing a potential bid for the ill-fated City Pacific. There is also a $31 million debt to GE, $20 million to an IndyCar racing team and $17 million to American Express.

Gore, aside from having to keep up with child payments of $4333 a month, owes $800,000 to his former wife Thaya Morgan-Phoenix.

Gore also owes his 30-year-old girlfriend Marina Oesterberg $11,000 and his business associate and close friend Graeme Stonehouse $2 million.

SHARE THE LOVE

As part of the ''win, win'', in which Gore will repay $1 million to his creditors each year, the entrepreneur's new trust company will enter into a $2 million-a-year consulting agreement with International Marina Development & Management (IMDM). Seems some of Gore's creditors are very forgiving.

IMDM, which was co-founded by Gore, has received financial backing from Lord Ashcroft. The company, which shares its name with Gore's girlfriend, includes as a director the former City Pacific director and former Liberal Party federal president Shane Stone. Stone and some other directors in IMDM are also directors of the Gore-founded Aussie Vineyards.

Gore's girlfriend, Marina, is also listed as a key executive of the wine venture, in the grape-growing region of Mount Tamborine. The Aussie Vineyard website even has a blurb on Gore's ''outstanding management record''.

Shane Stone is also chairman of the Gore-founded financial advisory group WPS Financial Group, which includes Scott Gore as its chief executive. Brisbane Times