From Dr Zhivago coats to a $3.5b empire: How Solomon Lew did it

afr.com:

The potential demerger of the retail brands within Solomon Lew’s $3.5 billion Premier Investments empire is in keeping with the billionaire’s long track record of making as much from deal-making as he has from the appeal of his wares themselves.

Premier’s announcement on Monday of a review into whether its brands – sleepwear phenomenon Peter Alexander, stationery seller Smiggle, and five other apparel brands including Portmans and Just Jeans – might grow stronger on their own is a milestone moment. It invites a look back at how the son of a humble Melbourne tailor became Australia’s richest retailer, worth $4.3 billion today.

Solomon Lew at Premier Investments’ Melbourne headquarters on Monday. Eamon Gallagher

One clue was in Premier concurrently informing the market on Monday that chief executive Richard Murray, the former JB Hi-Fi boss, was leaving less than two years after he replaced Mark McInnes, the former David Jones chief whom Lew had reluctantly agreed to let go after a decade.

Murray’s abrupt departure reflects another hallmark of Lew’s journey from an 18-year-old supplying coats to Myer, to being Myer’s largest (and prickliest) shareholder – a tendency to terminate business arrangements as soon as they are not working in the best interests of he and his stakeholders.

The dozens of landlords that Premier, under Lew as chairman, has walked away from over the years, or those that it refused to pay rent during the COVID-19 pandemic, might be feeling some empathy for Murray this week.

“We would count ourselves as probably as close to the number one negotiator in this industry as you can be,” Lew said of his ruthless reputation in an interview with The Australian Financial Review in March.

Lew’s creation and listing