i have never in my 35 years of working been...

...been so enthused about what I am doing." said Mark Bouris.

Wizard of Oz Mark Bouris pushes Yellow Brick Road
Rebecca Urban From: The Australian October 16, 2010 12:00AM
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MARK Bouris is already one of the best-known faces in finance in this country, but we are likely to see a lot more of him in coming months.

Since offloading his brainchild Wizard Home Loans for $400 million back in 2004, the Sydney-based businessman has been busy laying the groundwork on several projects he anticipates will see him enter the most exciting period of his 35-year career.

Having recently attracted Glenn Poswell, a former chief executive of the Packer family's Ellerston Capital, and a group of wealthy West Australian mining investors to back his Yellow Brick Road, Bouris has confirmed that a sharemarket listing for the fledgling financial services venture is on the cards.

With 35 branches across the country, Yellow Brick Road provides a range of financial services, including home loans, insurance, investment strategies, taxation advice and business structuring. It also has an accounting division, a stockbroking arm and a growing family office business.



But with plans to expand the footprint further, and provide more competition to the major banks in the process, access to capital is a must.

"A business like this needs more and more money to expand." Bouris said of the company that he believes will lead a resurgence of the non-bank lending sector.

"A float is definitely my plan," he said. "It could be in the short term -- I've certainly been approached about it."

Ever the self-promoter, Bouris has built valuable exposure for the business through his role as host on the Nine Network's The Apprentice, a spin-off from the popular series hosted by Donald Trump in the US.

The series winner, former auctioneer Andrew Morello, was awarded a job at Yellow Brick Road and remains with the firm a year after the program aired. But there's a lesser known project that has been occupying much of Bouris's time over the past 18 months -- that of chairman of a small listed technology group, TZ Limited.

He knew little of the company or its remote fastening technology when a major creditor, concerned when interest payments on a multi-million-dollar convertible loan went unpaid, approached him about investigating the situation.

A board coup was staged and Bouris became chairman on June 18 last year, suspending the stock from trading the following day after discovering that the company had nowhere near the cash reserves that had been stated in its public accounts.

TZ is now pursuing several former directors, including one-time chairman Andrew Sigalla, in the Supreme Court of NSW in a bid to recover about $13m in loans and other receivables.

With a hearing scheduled for next month, Bouris declined to comment on the case. But he's more than happy to talk about the company's progress since, including its relisting in March, a new financing deal with New York-based hedge fund QVT, which agreed to swap its debt for equity, plus a restructuring of the group's US operations. "It was so beat up a year ago it nearly collapsed. I could write a thriller about its challenges and all the drama it endured, and I might just do that one day," he said.

"This company had never achieved sales in the past. It had a good innovation, good technology and many potential applications, but had never actually built an application or sold an application.

"We needed to restructure. We weren't a science company any more doing experiments trying to work out how good our technology was. It was time to try to work out a way to make money out of it."

Bouris has since decided to focus the TZ technology on creating products for two specific applications -- data centre management and mail security. Since launching them earlier this year, the company has sold devices to various government agencies, telecommunication companies and a major US retailer. While the Australian Securities Exchange's listing rules prevents the company from publishing its sales forecasts, the number of purchase orders coming in has Bouris confident that it will hit internal targets.

The market, however, appears to be waiting for something more.

Unfortunately for many of TZ's long-suffering shareholders, the appointment of such a high-profile chairman has yet to translate into share price gains. The stock was suspended at 96c and since relisting it has slumped to around 46c.

And with Bouris's own exposure to the company limited to 800,000 shares and 3 million options, which were granted as remuneration, investors are keenly waiting to see whether he accumulates some so-called "skin in the game" now that a trading window for directors has opened following the recent release of the annual accounts.

Despite its progress, the company reported a $26.3m loss last financial year.

"TZ will make it and I want to be there with the staff and shareholders when it happens," Bouris said.

" I have never in my 35 years of working been so enthused about what I am doing."

The man once dubbed the "Wizard Of Oz" continues to work with many of the staff that helped him establish the home loan business in 1996. His brother Adrian, a former investment banker who is credited with executing the deals that saw the late Kerry Packer and Deutsche Bank invest in Wizard in the early days, now sits on the board of Yellow Brick Road.

Bouris's ability to get the filthy rich to open their wallets has clearly not waned, given the emergence of Poswell's Gannet Capital on the company's register with a 10 per cent stake. Poswell's clients include several wealthy Melbourne families, including the Smorgons.

Meanwhile, Yellow Brick Road's recent promise not to lift its home loan rates beyond any official movements, and its challenge to the major banks to do the same, shows Bouris has lost none of his bravado.

"The financial services sector is just screaming for a new, experienced challenger," he said.

"I have always fought my way through, especially against bigger and entrenched institutions. I actually enjoy fighting the fight and taking some ground from them or, at the very least, leaving some marks on them that they will never forget.

"After Wizard, I know a lot more and can do things a lot faster and better."