Printing industry scion James Hannan trades up to $9m Bellevue Hill house

James Hannan, chief operating officer of giant media, marketing and printing company Ovato, and his wife Laura have traded up handsomely from their recently sold Double Bay home.

Records show Hannan, son of printing magnate Michael Hannan, has bought the Bellevue Hill residence of property investor William Phillips and his wife Christina Sachs Phillips, director of neoprene bag line Cub + Scout, for $9.05 million.

Settlement on the sale follows speculation in recent months that it had sold off-market, with Ballard’s Paul Ephron pinned for the deal at the time. Ephron was yet to respond to calls at the time of publication.

The double block of 1200 square metres last traded five years ago for $6.775 million when sold by corporate adviser Malcolm McComas and his wife Judy, who had held it for 21 years since it was sold by the late BRW Rich List-ers Bela and Eve Schwartz for $1.4 million.

Hannan’s purchase comes six months after he sold his Double Bay house on Epping Road for almost $4.4 million, having owned it since 2014 when it was sold for almost $3 million by QBE Insurance group treasurer Danny Fischer.

Michael Hannan is chairman and major shareholder of Ovato, which was formed two years ago after a merger of the country’s two major printing giants Independent Print Media Group (IPMG) and PMP.

The Hannan family’s IPMG newspaper division sold off the vast majority of its suburban newspaper to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007 for about $480 million.

Hannan snr sold his Woollahra home – previously owned by the Packer family – for $13 million in 2017 and a year later bought the Ikon penthouse in Potts Point for about $8.5 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.