One.Tel founder settles A$132m suit

Dylan Bushell-Embling
15 Sep 2010
00:00

Jodee Rich, the former Australian corporate high-flyer and co-founder of failed mobile operator One.Tel, has settled legal action against over the company's 2001 collapse.

Rich has announced he has withdrawn his claim after resolving all outstanding disputes with PBL chairman and former One.Tel director James Packer.

But the defendants, as well as other former One.Tel associates, still face court action from One.Tel's liquidator.

The mobile and long-distance telco, a partnership between Rich and the family companies of media tycoons Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, collapsed spectacularly in 2001.

It was the second corporate failure for Rich, whose IT retailer, Imagineering, sank in controversial circumstances in 1990.

Rich has claimed that the decision by PBL and Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited not to follow through on a pledge to underwrite One.Tel's planned A$132 million ($124.7m) rights issue in early 2001 was the nail in the coffin that buried the company.

The defendants had claimed that they withdrew support for the placement after discovering Rich had misled over the financial state of the operator, and argued that the funds would not have been enough to allow One.Tel to recover from its debt burden.

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