source : the age
Daniel Grollo, the recently bankrupt scion of property development group Grocon, flogged $1.145 million of his own furniture in five separate fire sales in the years before he went broke.
The one-time property prince of Melbourne was left so skint he declared no real estate, collectables or jewellery of any value to his bankruptcy trustee in March, new documents reveal.
Instead, Grollo said he had just $5267.52 cash, and a clapped-out 2019 Honda motorcycle worth just $5000.
The 56-year-old’s debts, on the other hand, were substantial – $58.9 million in total, including $10.7 million to his family’s nemesis, the Australian Tax Office (ATO).
Grollo also declared in his statement of affairs he was owed $3.2 million, including a $47,689 loan for a deposit on an apartment he provided to a company named after his young adult daughter, Matilda, in 2020.
So what financially felled the man who once lived like a billionaire in a $35 million apartment in a Trump tower overlooking New York’s Central Park and created iconic buildings dotting the eastern seaboard of Australia? That skyline included the Eureka Tower and the Emporium and QV shopping centres in Melbourne, the Ribbon building on Sydney’s Darling Harbour and soaring office towers in Brisbane’s CBD.
Was it the tax man exercising retaliation over a decades-long grudge against the family? The CFMEU and their blockades of Grocon’s worksites?
Or was it a conspiracy between the NSW government and James Packer’s Crown casino and property group Lendlease over some pretty special Sydney Harbour views?
The criminal charges against Grocon? His personal life? Or his love of clearly expensive furniture?
The answer seems to be: all of the above.
Few Australian businessmen have notched up as many impressive feats or business errors as Grollo since he took over the family business, Grocon, in 2011 from his father, Bruno, who in turn had taken over from his father, Luigi.
Under the 2011 deal, Grollo’s siblings, Adam (a former joint managing director of Grocon) and Leanne, received the assets of the company while Daniel took over the operating arm of the business.
Led by the dashing and smart Daniel Grollo, Grocon soon amassed a multibillion-dollar development pipeline with top-tier partners like GPT, Dexus, Colonial First State and ISPT.
Along the way Grocon reported big revenues, upwards of $500 million, but disputes with partners were frequent and profits skinny.
Most of the money the company made was recycled into that capital-hungry pipeline.
Eventually, the group collapsed in late 2020 owing $110 million to creditors, including at least $15 million to the tax office.
At that moment, Grollo had fulfilled the famous adage about rich families – the first generation builds it, the second generation maintains it and the third generation destroys it.
In the months that followed Grocon’s collapse, the company brokered a controversial rescue deal where employees and small creditors owed less than $10,000 were paid out in full and the tax office received 43.9¢ in the dollar.
Other creditors received just 2.9¢ in the dollar, infuriating many other large property groups owed money by the business.
Grollo moved on, partnering with Singapore’s GIC to form build-to-rent venture Home – though he was forced to give up a $30 million penthouse in the Eureka Tower.
This masthead has uncovered, however, that buried in the detail of that rescue deal was a clause that would come back to haunt Grollo.
Documents obtained by this masthead show Grollo was subject to a “standstill agreement” with the ATO that allowed the tax man to ask for payment when the last stages of the rescue deal were completed in November 2025. A month later, Grollo would appoint liquidators to five more companies.
In February, just months after the completion of the rescue deal, the tax man hit Grollo with a new $4.1 million bill – on top of the $6.7 million he still owed.
Unlike his father and his uncle, Rino Grollo – who famously fought back against a $59 million claim from the ATO over the Rialto Tower development in the Melbourne CBD in the late 1990s, and settled for $42 million – Daniel Grollo would not be so well advised or so lucky.
Grollo’s love of the high life was another difference between him and his Thornbury-based father Bruno and grandfather Luigi – an Italian migrant and skilled concreter who founded the Grocon empire back in the 1940s.
In 2010, Daniel Grollo relocated with his family to New York, and bought a series of adjoining apartments in Trump Parc Tower for $17.7 million, according to records filed by a liquidator to one of Grollo’s companies. He also forked out $15.7 million on renovations, including creating a home gym for then wife Kat.
The records show a $28.2 million mortgage on the apartment, while the company that owned it owed trade creditors $13 million.
School fees for Grollo’s two children were more than $50,000 a year. There was art, a collection of Lady Gaga memorabilia and very expensive furniture.
“He spent a lot of money on French furniture and that New York apartment, which he borrowed heavily against. He stripped bare the Eureka Tower apartment for renovations. He was living well beyond his means,” says a former close business associate who asked not to be named for professional reasons.
In June last year, Grollo’s company that owned the apartment forfeited it to its lender. It was offered for sale in March for just $US13 million ($18.5 million).
According to Grollo’s bankruptcy records, he sold his furniture in five deals between June 2021 and June 2023.
Four of the five sales in 2021 and 2022 were sold to an “other related party”. The fifth was through an agent totalling $140,627.11.
These sales appear to be separate to the $1.3 million raked in at the widely reported September 2021 auction of Hermes furniture, though it is unclear whether that auction was held on behalf of Grollo personally or on behalf of an entity related to his business affairs.
This masthead is not suggesting Grollo was not compliant with his obligations of disclosure.
A spokeswoman for Grollo said he had fully complied with his obligations of disclosure in his statement of affairs. “Any allegation to the contrary is simply and utterly incorrect. His business and personal affairs have been combed over by liquidators and a trustee for a number of years. He has always, and continues to be, fully cooperative with them,” the spokeswoman said.
Grollo also forked out huge sums on air travel, splitting his time between his family in New York and Grocon’s head office in Melbourne’s QV building, and on astronomical school fees for his two kids.
Grollo came home in 2018 after his marriage broke down. By then, Grocon was lurching from legal dispute to legal dispute with its partners.
Says the close business associate: “He spread himself too thin, he neglected the business and he upset his family. He partied too much.”
Defenders of Grollo say these issues would not have been such a big problem if Grocon had been more profitable.
For that failure, they don’t blame Grollo, they blame the construction arm of the CFMEU.
For years, CFMEU and Grocon were locked in various disputes over safety and pay deals.
It boiled over in the early 2010s when the militant union blockaded Grocon’s sites and illegally black banned Boral from supplying concrete to the group, leading to cost blowouts.
The animus was so bad that in 2014, the trade union royal commission heard evidence from a Melbourne builder that they were discouraged by then-CFMEU boss John Setka from hiring a former Grocon executive, with Setka saying: “He used to work for Daniel Grollo and I hate Grollo, I can’t stand the c—.”
‘He used to work for Daniel Grollo and I hate Grollo, I can’t stand the c—.’John Setka
Years later, this masthead revealed the CFMEU had become overrun by bikies – an allegation Grollo had made at the time – leading to Setka’s ouster from the union.
Says one former senior Grocon executive: “Daniel and Grocon fought with the union when no other tier 1 builder dared to. I don’t think it helped that he was the only person standing up to them. He was proven right with the unions, massively right. But it came at a big cost, particularly personally.”
Some of the public goodwill Grocon had in that fight was lost in an event that was unexpected and accidental.
In 2013, Melbourne was shocked when a gust of wind knocked over a 20-metre brick wall along Grocon’s Swanston Street worksite, killing three people – siblings Alexander Jones, 19, and Bridget Jones, 18, and visiting French student Dr Marie-Faith Fiawoo.
A Grocon subsidiary pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to ensure a safe workplace in 2014 and was fined $250,000 over the incident.
Within two years, Grocon snared a huge project – as the preferred developer of a 2Ha site overlooking Sydney’s Darling Harbour in the Barangaroo precinct.
Grocon later sued the NSW government for $270 million, alleging it had done a deal with nearby Crown Resorts and Lendlease to protect their sweeping views of their developments at the expense of Grocon’s development, which forced the Melbourne developer to scrap the project. In 2024, the NSW government reportedly settled the case for $27 million.
“The government was bending over backwards to get a deal. There was a lot of goodwill between the parties but Crown decided the sight lines were too precious. In the end he [Grollo] wouldn’t compromise his vision. And it became a lawyer’s paradise,” said a former executive involved in the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A spokeswoman for Grollo told this masthead that the NSW deal was insufficient to resolve his tax issues.
“In order for creditors to be supportive of a deed of company arrangement in respect to the Grocon Group, Mr Grollo was required to provide certain creditors, including the ATO, with personal guarantees,” she said.
“The amounts guaranteed were to be paid out of the proceeds in Grocon’s case against the NSW government in relation to the Central Barangaroo project.
“Although a NSW parliamentary inquiry found Grocon was not treated fairly, the proceeds of settlement from that litigation were insufficient to discharge the amounts owed to all creditors (including for the amounts guaranteed by Mr Grollo).”
The spokeswoman said Grollo had made every attempt to satisfy the claims of creditors.
“He has not been the subject of any claim by a creditor (other than pursuant to a guarantee) and has always conducted himself and the businesses he ran with utmost integrity,” she said.
Grollo remains the executive in charge at Home, though two industry sources confirmed GIC was exploring selling stakes in Home’s projects.
For Grocon’s creditors who feel burned by the collapse of the company back in 2021 there is no love lost for Grollo, or the tax office.
“I have no sympathy for him. Grocon hurt so many people,” said an industry source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“So many contractors and other property groups got hurt by its collapse and the ATO intervened to wave through a terrible deal. Now it looks like they’ll never get paid either.”
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