Billionaire Buys Ex-Wallaby’s Historic Hotel

Rich-lister Sam Arnaout’s Iris Capital has bought hotelier and former Wallaby Bill Young’s Wisemans Inn Hotel on Sydney’s waterfront.

The hotel sits on a 5100sq m site overlooking the Wisemans Ferry waterway on the Hawkesbury River north-west of Sydney.

First built in 1827, the 195-year-old hotel has been held by Bill Young’s Young Hotels for nearly 20 years. 

Arnaout bought the pub in an off-market sale negotiated by HTL Property managing director Andrew Jolliffe and national director Dan Dragicevich. 

Arnaout has made a habit of regularly buying up hotels and pubs through his wholly owned company Iris Capital but has also interests in other sectors—his first commercial acquisition was the Lidcombe Post Office in 1998 which returned $2.5 million in its first year. 

Joliffe said the investor had a strategic approach.

“Sam Arnaout’s Iris Capital has demonstrated a deliberate approach to augmenting a balance sheet which now includes significant residential tower developments, traditional and accommodation hotels, casinos and multiple agricultural investments,” Jolliffe said.

Iris Capital currently owns and operates more than 24 hotel venues, including Hotel Steyne and the Ivanhoe Hotel in Manly, and the Bourbon and Empire hotels in Potts Point.

It also recently bought the 104-year old Strathfield Hotel in Sydney for $80 million and Casino Canberra for $63 million in July.

It also bought the casino in Alice Springs this year and then spent $75 million in total on three pubs and two accommodation venues in Alice Springs in July.

Young Hotels has also just purchased the Bar Broadway Hotel in Chippendale for $37 million. In May it sold Glebe’s Friend in Hand Hotel for $11 million as it moved to consolidate its hotel property portfolio.

▲ The grounds at Wisemans Inn Hotel, now owned by Iris Capital after former Wallaby Bill Young sold it for $10 million.

Dragevich said the hospitality market was on track to have an exceptional year in terms of sales volume.

“Consolidated sales will comfortably exceed $2 billion nationally this calendar year and our assessment of the transaction based look through to December is prosperous for all industry stakeholders,” Dragicevich said.

British convict Solomon Wiseman, who arrived in Australia in 1806 after nearly facing death for stealing, built the hotel after being pardoned in 1819 and being given a grant of 80ha of land. It eventually became the town of Wiseman’s Ferry. 

The Wisemans Inn Hotel contains part of Cobham Hall, Wiseman’s original family home, now a museum; 11 accommodation rooms and a bistro.