CowinHave seen this chaps name around..did some digging....seems like a good person to have in your corner....
Jack Cowin (born 1943) is an Australian businessman who owns Hungry Jack's, the Burger King franchise in Australia[1] and is the Executive Chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, one of the country's largest privately held businesses. He is sometimes called The Father of Fast Food in Australia.
[edit]Early life
Born in Windsor in Ontario, Canada, his father had been posted to Australia briefly by Ford and later encouraged his son to consider emigrating there.[1]
He became an insurance salesman with London Life for four years inToronto before deciding to visit Australia to assess some businessopportunities. Seeing long queues at a Chinese takeaway restaurant whilevacationing in Sydney, he became convinced that fast food would sellwell. He later returned to Australia to evaluate expanding KFC into the market that at that stage had limited fast food options.
He bought the right to open ten KFC franchises in Western Australia,raised $10,000 from each of thirty people to launch the business inDecember 1969, having moved with his wife and young child. Those whoinvested $10,000 then, had an investment worth around $8.9 million as atMarch 2006.
After opening eight KFC outlets, he bought the rights to Burger King.They both later discovered someone else had the rights to the BurgerKing trademark in Australia, so Cowin instead called the outlets HungryJack's. Many years later he had a falling out with Burger King over thename and other issues related to their franchise agreement which waseventually resolved in his favour.
The business Competitive Foods Australia continues to be privatelyheld by his family, with an estimated value of $350 million. It owns 50KFC outlets in Western Australia and the Northern Territory in additionto the 340 Hungry Jack's outlets throughout Australia, only 100franchised. His family trust is also the majority shareholder inDomino's Pizza, one of the country's biggest pizza franchises.
Cowin also owns a meat processing business that exports throughoutthe world, he sold a substantial investment in Stanbroke PastoralCompany one of the country's biggest cattle station operators. He isalso an investor with 40% of BridgeClimb the business that operateswalking tours over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Bridgeclimb itself made an estimated $10 million profit in 2002. He also very shrewdly invested in Network Ten,the television broadcaster, selling out of his stake with a profit ofaround $100 million. He is also one of the largest investors in RossHuman Directors Limited, an Australian listed recruiting company. Cowinis also an investor in the Lone Star restaurant chain in Canada.
He is a member of the board of directors of Ten Network Ltd. He isalso a director of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. Cowin is an activemember of the World Presidents Organization. He lives in Sydney withhis wife, with whom he has had four children.
He made a donation to the University of Western Ontario to pay for the stands of the new football field, named after his father Stanley J. Cowin.
Cowin was listed on the BRW Australian Rich 200 list at number 70 in 2008,[2] and 79 in 2009, and had an estimated net worth of $AU486m[citation needed] and an estimated value of $AU538m in 2010.[3]