Sydney pub baron’s empire in crisis as $123m tax bill sinks key company
The empire of would-be Sydney pub baron Jon Adgemis continues to unravel, with one of his main operating companies collapsing into liquidation owing a staggering A$123 million to the tax office.
Public Hospitality Operating Co, the business at the heart of Adgemis’s venue rollout, is now in the hands of liquidator Tim Cook from Balance Insolvency. His report paints a picture of missing records, unanswered questions and mounting pressure from creditors circling Adgemis’s once-buoyant pub and hotel group.
Cook’s early findings show the operating company owes the ATO hundreds of millions, but he says there’s no clarity on how the debt came about. “I am continuing to gather additional information and documentation to make a more informed conclusion concerning the matter,” Cook said, adding that “there is some evidence to suggest that the company traded whilst insolvent.”
Adgemis, who is currently renting a Bondi penthouse for nearly A$60,000 a month, denies that his company operated insolvently.
Adding to the mystery, Public Hospitality Operating Co’s previous tax returns listed assets worth A$1.29 billion as of June 2024. Yet, Cook says no records have been produced to back those figures. “Due to no explanations and records received from the director, I have not been able to fully examine the circumstances leading to the failure of the company,” he wrote.
Venues under siege
For years, Adgemis’s playbook was to snap up tired venues across Sydney and Melbourne and inject new life into them with slick refurbishments and a more up-market edge. At its peak, his group controlled 22 pubs and hotels, attracting plenty of attention in the hospitality scene.
But the debt that funded those acquisitions has caught up. Lenders have been repossessing venues over the past year. The Asian arm of US lender Muzinich grabbed five pubs in 2023, while the Kurrajong Hotel in Sydney was seized and sold just last week for A$20 million.
Millinium Capital Managers, a growing force in the Sydney pub market, swooped on the Kurrajong after already picking up the Town Hall Hotel in Balmain and the Three Weeds in Paddington — all former Adgemis properties.
Meanwhile, liquidators are circling other parts of the empire. BRI Ferrier has been called in amid allegations of a A$300 million GST fraud scheme now under ATO investigation — a claim Adgemis also denies.
Cook, who was brought in after an approach from Adgemis’s adviser Olvera Advisory, is currently appointed to seven companies linked to the group.
Adgemis is also trying to convince creditors to sign off on a personal insolvency agreement that would spare him from bankruptcy. The ATO is again central to the process, claiming A$162 million. Approval requires 75% of creditors to back the plan.
As Cook summed up in his report, “it would be reasonable to believe the company failed likely due to a combination of, but not limited to … poor financial control including lack of records, the failure of entities previously controlled by the director (and) noncompliance with statutory obligations.”
Jonathan Jackson, 18th September 2025
