Paul Fayman
Pinkus ben Shmuel Ze'ev , known professionally as Paul Fayman, was a Polish-born Australian entrepreneur. Based in Melbourne, he played a notable role in the city's post-war urban development. A holocaust survivor, Fayman honed his skills in the post-war German wholesale markets before marrying and moving to Australia. He is best known for his work in the Melbourne property market, and was the so-called "financial expert" behind property group Hanover Holdings – which built shopping centres, housing estates and city buildings between 1969 and 1979. He later founded Austram Corporation, which took over the First Artists film studio. Fayman died in 1985 and his fortune was inherited by his descendants, who operate the Fayman International Group of Companies.
Early life and Education
Paul Fayman was born in Pilica, a small village in east-central Poland, and was raised in the nearby industrial city of Sosnowiec. His father, Shmuel, was a livestock trader and his mother, Leja, looked after their 11 children. The family were observed Orthodox Jewish customs and were active in the local religious community – Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner described Fayman's upbringing as being "very Jewish". By the late 1930s, antisemitism and political instability had begun to affect Jewish communities across Europe. Fayman discussed his experience with journalist John Sorrel in 1969:"Then the Nazis marched through. We were Jewish, and in 1942 they split us up and carted us off to various concentration camps... I managed to survive the camps, mainly by good luck. I ended up being liberated from Buchenwald by the Americans. I spent the next year or so as a refugee tramping through Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland looking for my family, but I couldn't find anyone."Fayman eventually got word that his younger sister, Cesia had settled in Germany. "I found her. That was one of the happiest days of my life" he recalled. They reconnected, and Paul moved into a nearby unit in Neuhausen. Reflecting on that period, he stated: "For a long time I didn't know what to do. I had somehow lost the urge to work. Then I got a break. The Americans were selling some disposal goods from their post exchanges – chocolates, soap and other items. I became a wholesaler." His unofficial business was conducted through Germany's thriving post-war grey market, where post exchange goods deemed excess or obsolete by the military were sold or bartered informally.
His customer base included local Germans seeking Western products, fellow Jewish displaced persons who had access to hard currency or American relatives, and small shopkeepers looking to stock rare or in-demand items. During this period, Fayman became increasingly interested in Yiddish-language films. In a biographical interview, he claimed to have financed a film similiar to the locally-produced Long is the Road, – except his was not shown because it supposedly got him into "political hot water" with the German government. Fayman married his wife, Fela, in 1946 and they had two children. After the Berlin Blockade began in 1948, his sister Cesia emigrated to Australia, fearing another European war. Paul initially planned to immigrate to the United States, having completed his paperwork and packed his belongings.
However, after speaking with his sister on phone, he changed his mind. As he later recalled: "When I rang Cesia in Melbourne she was so upset at the thought of the two remaining members of the family splitting this way that I decided, on the spot, to make Australia my new home too." Paul, his wife and their two young children left the Port of Genoa in December 1951 and spent several weeks aboard the TSS Maunganui, arriving at Melbourne in January 1952. He immigrated as Pinkus Fayman, but was known professionally in Australia as Paul Fayman. Arriving with "a bit of money" and limited understanding of English, he bought a house in the city's inner-north and began seeking opportunities to acquire a small business.
Fayman accumulated significant wealth through ventures in the wholesale meat and poultry industry, entering the trade via a private partnership with butchers Max Siegel and Sam Unglick. The syndicate wholesaled kosher meat under the supervision of the Melbourne Beth Din and maintained strong ties to Melbourne’s Orthodox Jewish community. Beginning with a single store in Carlton, the business expanded rapidly, growing into a network of 30 outlets across the city by 1955, each operating under a different name. Fayman later recalled working “sixteen hours a day, six days a week” during this period. The rapid expansion attracted the attention of the Prices Control Branch, which began investigating the chain in late 1953 for suspected breaches of consumer law. In a widely publicised case, Siegel and Fayman were charged and fined for systematically overcharging customers.
Cesia's husband, Shayek, was a prominent table tennis player who partnered with Fayman on some of his earliest ventures in the country. In mid-1952, they jointly acquired a prominent corner site in Coburg. Known as the Rennie Service Station, it was leased to popular mechanic Frank Twigg.
Shortly before the 1956 Summer Olympics, Fayman partnered with Stan Fayman and Mark Nowak to acquire a joint share in a private company called Esplanade Freeholdings, which owned and operated the prominent Esplanade Hotel at St Kilda. At the time, it was regarded as was one of the largest resort hotels in Victoria. The directors had hoped for late-night trading approvals, but their expectations were unmet. Furthermore, the local council and licensing court rejected their proposed £1500 expansion of the hotel, which had been designed by notable architect J. Wallinga and would have seen the addition of a continental-style garden dining-room. "Unfortunately, a large block booking was cancelled, which, coupled with other problems, gave us a hard struggle which lasted two years" Paul recalled. He gave up the hotel, and, pooling funds with four partners, bought a controlling interest worth about $310,000 in Wright Bros; an old-established chain of delicatessens which had branches at Elizabeth Street and in suburbs like Collingwood, Malvern and Prahran. Fayman assumed the role of chairman, bringing with him prominent lawyers Maurice Slonim, Leon Velik, Joseph Emanuel.
After taking control of the company, Fayman assumed the role of Chairman and helped strategically expand its scope of operations by leading a program to diversify, creating subsidiaries that invested in property development, retail, electronics and produce wholesaling. "With self-service upon us, I realised were too small. So we sold them off at quite a nice profit" he later recalled.
The Wright Bros. Development company was established in July 1958, and focused on shopping centres and residential subdivisions in Melbourne's burgeoning outer suburbs. Many of these employed a mixed-use strategy that integrated residential, commercial, and sometimes industrial components within a single master-planned estate. Fayman noted the ease of property sales during that era, stating: "In those days it was so easy, you could sell off a map, you didn't even need to make roads." Between 1955 and 1959, he bought over poultry farm at Canterbury Road, Forest Hill. Fayman envisioned a large mixed-use development for the site, incorporating a large American-style shopping centre – which was a concept largely new to Victoria. First announced in mid-1957 as a joint venture with Walter McLaughlan and a private consortium of investors, the development experienced significant delays and was re-announced under a mostly-new partnership between the companies of Fayman, Raymond Borg and Stanley Korman.
The centre began construction in late 1959, around the same time Fayman and a separate consortium began planning to build several highly-modern licensed pubs and motels in Melbourne's booming outer-suburbs. Land was designated for a pub at Fayman's Forest Hill development, and an attempt was made to establish a similar venue at his Borrack Square shopping centre in Altona North. However, applications for a liquor license were vetoed by the local and state government on the grounds of possible interference with the welfare of the surrounding community. One proposal from this era that did proceed was the Hotel Monash at Clayton, which was said to be the first Hotel/Motel in metropolitan Melbourne. The mid-century modern complex opened in 1963 alongside 90 residential blocks and industrial sites.
In January 1960, as planning and development was progressing at both Forest Hill and Clayton, Fayman became a director of Gippsland Acceptance Ltd alongside his lawyer associates Maurice Slonim, Joseph Emanuel, and Leon Velik. The nine-year-old public company was experiencing record growth at the time, having recently diversified from its hire-purchase finance operations into the retail and property markets through the acquisition of Danstons, a home furnishing and building organisation. Profits continued to increase until late 1960, when it was revealed that the company's liabilities appeared to exceed six times shareholder's funds. The liquidity crisis left shareholders increasingly dissatisfied with the company, and its accounts were thoroughly criticised by the press. A "stormy" March 1961 shareholder meeting finally addressed the issue: an agreement was formed for the release of new shares in a bid to avoid liquidation. As share prices continued to slip, Fayman resigned from the board of directors due to "ill health". A scheme of arrangement for Gippsland Acceptance was approved the following day. The company recorded a loss of £404,000 for the financial year ending 30 June 1961.
Fayman ultimately prevailed through the credit squeeze, largely thanks to his shareholding in the Toppa ice cream company. Several of his associates fell on hard times. Raymond Borg and Stanley Korman, partners in Fayman's Forest Hill project, both declared bankruptcy and later faced charges for fraudulent activities. As a result, planning and construction at Forest Hill was effectively abandoned until 1964, when development restarted under a partnership with Maurice Alter and George Herscu. Following its successful grand opening and sustained popularity, Fayman formally partnered up with Alter and Herscu, consolidating their interests as the Masaga Group. The business primarily developed large-format retail stores and supermarkets as well as housing estates and industrial land.