Print baron Michael Hannan sells Potts Point penthouse for $11m

Print baron Michael Hannan sold his Potts Point penthouse in the landmark Ikon building on Monday for $11 million.

This is the two-storey spread Hannan bought less than four years ago for $8.32 million from Leonard Harlan, the New York-based co-founder of private equity giant Castle Harlan, and his wife Fleur, former wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the time Hannan bought the Ikon penthouse, it set a record for the building, but that high was smashed the following year when Peter Freedman, owner of world-leading audio powerhouse RODE Microphones, bought the neighbouring penthouse for $16 million.

Hannan was downsizing from his Woollahra residence when he bought into Potts Point, having sold his Rosemont Avenue house in 2017 for $13 million on the quiet to mining investor and restaurateur Brendan McPherson and his wife Rowena.

Hannan’s sale price of his Ikon penthouse was disclosed on the sales notification of its online Domain advertisement soon after lunch on Monday, three weeks after it was listed with $11 million hopes. Jason Boon and Geoff Cox, of Richardson & Wrench Elizabeth Bay, were gagged by confidentiality agreements from disclosing the buyer.

Hannan is chairman of Australia’s largest printing group Ovato, that prints the stable of magazines once owned by Kerry Packer, including The Australian Women’s Weekly.

The Hannan family own 50 per cent of shares in the group and Hannan’s son James is the group’s chief operating officer. Hannan jnr traded up to a $9 million residence in Bellevue Hill last year.

The family’s reshuffle of their real estate follows a difficult year for the Ovato Group after hundreds of workers faced pay cuts of more than 30 per cent when the pandemic hit in March, and a redundancy scheme was rolled out early this year that will see Ovato pay a fraction of workers’ redundancy entitlements and the remainder subsidised by the Fair Entitlements Guarantee Scheme.