Mining giant Brian Loton sells longtime Toorak home
The Nic Bochsler-designed Highgate Hill, Toorak home of former BHP executive and chairman Brian Loton sold after its weekend RT Edgar auction, where it came with $4 million plus price hopes through agent Michael Ebeling.
The three bedroom cul de sac offering was built in 1992 for Brian Loton and his wife, Joan.
That was around the time he became chairman of Australia's biggest company.
Loton's first three years as CEO of BHP, between 1984 and 1986, saw him repel three takeovers from the late Robert Holmes à Court. He was its chief until 1991, then promoted from deputy chairman to chairman to replace Sir Arvi Parbo in 1992.
In 1991 the Fairfax resources writer Bruce Hextall wrote entering the 1980s, BHP was a large, but undisciplined entity, with a bureaucracy as ingrained as that of the Public Service, but had been able to transform itself into one of the world's great mining houses with a spread of interests that provide it with the ability to make hay even when the sun is not shining.
Its 1991 year profit of $1.05 billion outdid the previous year Australian record of $955 million in 1990.
The auctioneer Warwick Anderson told the auction crowd that the St Kevin's Christian Brothers order had placed single dwelling covenants in the cul de sac enforcing no more than a home per land title on its 1970s subdivision.
The corner of Orrong and St Georges Road had been the location of the school's Glendalough campus until the 1970s having purchased the holding in 1931 for £5,800.
St Kevin's Glendalough relocated to its current Lansell Road site after the 5.7 hectare Clovelly estate became available following the death of the Henry Jones IXL jam king, Achalen Palfreyman. It was bought by St Kevin's for $410,000.
When Palfreyman died in 1967 aged 93, he was believed to have been Australia's wealthiest man with a $6.6 million probate estate. The demolished home had 15 iron verandah columns apparently sent to Kirribilli House, Sydney for restoration of the verandah.
Its stained glass panels - said by Whelan the Wrecker to be the best he had seen in a Melbourne house - were inserted by the Langslow family into 79 St Vincent Place, Albert Park.
The Hillgate Hill vendors had the Nic Bochsler-designed family home replace their existing accommodation.
James Buyer Advocates reported there was a low opening bid of $3.6 million.
The only other was the vendor bid to $4 million.
It was bought after auction.
The neighbouring house had fetched $3,272,000 million in 2012 when the former Hawthorn Football Club president Ian Dicker sold. He had paid $1.02 million in 1987.
The eight-room, three level brick house at 11 Double Bay property fetched $1.1million at 1994 auction by the ANZ Bank, and the last sale on the cul de sac at $4.25 million in late 2012.
The block had traded in the mid-1970s between $60,000 to $70,000.
