James Douglas Packer (born 8 September 1967) is an Australian billionaire businessman and investor. Packer is the son of Kerry Packer, a media mogul, and his wife, Roslyn Packer. He is the grandson of Frank Packer. He inherited control of the family company, Consolidated Press Holdings Limited, as well as investments in Crown Resorts and other companies. He is the former executive chairman of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) and Consolidated Media Holdings, which predominantly owned media interests across a range of platforms, and a former executive chairman of Crown Resorts.
As of May 2023, Packer's net worth was assessed as A$4.95 billion by the Financial Review Rich List, ranking him as the eighteenth-wealthiest Australian; he was the richest person in Australia in 2006 and 2007. Forbes Asia magazine assessed Packer's net worth at US$3.6 billion in January 2019, the ninth-richest Australian. In June 2022, the Federal Court approved Blackstone's takeover of Crown Casinos, delivering Packer A$3.36 billion in exchange for his 37 percent stake in the company, which he has been involved with since 1999. Packer has an investment in ADH TV, although the total value is unknown.
James Packer was born in Sydney, the son of philanthropist Roslyn (née Weedon) and media mogul Kerry Packer. His grandfather was the media proprietor Sir Frank Packer. Packer was educated at Cranbrook School in Bellevue Hill, Sydney. After obtaining the Higher School Certificate (HSC) at Cranbrook, he began working at his father's extensive Newcastle Waters cattle station in the Barkly Tableland of the Northern Territory, where he was a jackeroo. Packer has stated he did not attend university as he "didn't have the marks". His mentors, he has said, include his father and corporate executive Albert J. Dunlap.
Following the dotcom crash of 2000–2001, Packer acquired stakes in the online classified sites Seek and Carsales.com, believing that newspaper companies relying heavily on classified advertising were vulnerable to online companies in categories including employment and vehicle listings.
Packer purchased a 25% stake in SEEK for A$33 million in August 2003. He sold most of his stake six years later for A$440 million. At Packer's urging, the magazine group then controlled by his family, Australian Consolidated Press, acquired a 41% stake in online advertiser Carsales in October 2005. The deal, initially valued at A$100 million, was eventually worth A$462 million to Packer-controlled entities.
In March 2006, Packer began discussing whether to sell Channel Nine and the Australian Consolidated Press magazine group to help fund his move into the international gaming and tourism business. Given changes in media due to the Internet and pay-TV, Packer was concerned about the future of free-to-air television. On 17 October 2006, Packer's team finalised a deal to sell 50% of the media assets—which also included a 50% stake in web portal Ninemsn and a 51% stake in Carsales—to private equity group CVC Asia Pacific for A$4.5 billion, plus an additional A$1 billion in equity in the new company, which would be called PBL Media.
In June 2007, Packer sold another 25% share of the joint-venture PBL Media to CVC for $515 million. In October 2008, Packer wrote down his final 25% stake in PBL Media to zero. By the end of 2012, debt from CVC's acquisition had overwhelmed Channel Nine and US hedge funds ousted CVC, taking complete ownership.
Packer was a director of Australian Telecommunications company One.Tel, which was declared insolvent during May 2001. The collapse of One.Tel cost PBL A$327 million. Packer admitted at a PBL annual general meeting that he had learned "painful lessons" from the collapse of One.Tel. Later at the liquidator's inquiry over the collapse he denied that he was apologising for his own conduct; instead, he claimed, "I was making an apology for accepting the bona fides of Mr. [Jodee] Rich and the executive directors of One.Tel."
In April 2014, Lachlan Murdoch and Packer agreed to a A$40 million settlement over the One.Tel failure. The settlement was approved by the Supreme Court of New South Wales on 17 April 2014, with A$14.93 million to be paid by the Packer family's Consolidated Press Holdings, A$11.77 million to be paid by Packer's Crown Resorts and A$13.3 million to be paid by News Corp.
Since his father's death, Packer has moved away from the family's traditional media businesses and focused on creating a worldwide gambling empire: Crown Resorts. It has businesses and investments in the integrated resort and casino sectors in Australia and Macau, and wholly owns and operates a high-end casino in London, Crown Aspinall's. In October 2017, Crown's market capitalization was over $8 billion. On 21 March 2018, Packer resigned as executive chairman of Crown Resorts. In May 2019, Packer sold half of his stake in Crown Resorts to Lawrence Ho.
In October 2020, Packer appeared before an independent inquiry into Crown's suitability to hold casino licence in NSW. When questioned over impropriety, illegality and corruption, Packer admitted that while a director of Crown he made "shameful" and "disgraceful" threats against businessman Ben Gray. In February 2021, the inquiry found that Crown was unsuitable to hold a casino licence due in part to Packer's threats to Ben Gray, as well as its "continued commercial relationships with junket operators who had links to triads and other organised crime groups.” In February 2022, The Blackstone Group acquired Crown Resorts for A$8.9 billion (US$6.4 billion). Packer held 37% of Crown Resorts stock at the time of the sale. He received A$3.36 billion for his shares.
Packer purchased an 18% stake in Network Ten in 2010, quickly offloading half to Lachlan Murdoch. Three months later, after a dispute with Murdoch over a senior management appointment, Packer resigned his Network Ten board seat. There was also speculation that he resigned due to a conflict of interest with his interests in Consolidated Media Holdings. Following the implementation of CBS's restructure of Network Ten announced in August 2017, Packer will no longer have an interest in Network Ten. In late May 2011, Packer made a reported A$80 million investment in daily deals sites Scoopon and Catch of the Day through a partnership between his Consolidated Press Holding and several other investors, including Andrew Bassat, a co-founder of Seek.com.au.
In December 2012, Packer and producer-filmmaker Brett Ratner formed a joint venture, RatPac Entertainment. The first film financed by RatPac was a major success. Gravity, a space thriller directed by Alfonso Cuaron and starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, generated the strongest-ever October opening in the US and took box office receipts of more than US$100 million in its first five days. Packer sold his investment in RatPac for an undisclosed amount in April 2017. According to Filmink "Who knows what sort of legacy James Packer is going to leave when he shuffles off this mortal coil, but I maintain the films he helped finance...will stand out among the more positive achievements."
In October 2014, Packer bought out Peter Holmes à Court's 37.5% share of the ownership of South Sydney Rabbitohs NRL club, becoming Russell Crowe's partner in the Blackcourt League Investments Pty Limited venture.
In 2021, Packer co-founded NPACT Capital and Investment Management with the former Crown Resorts executive Todd Nisbet and Packer's Consolidated Press Holdings. The property investment venture backed luxury residential developments in Sydney and Melbourne in joint venture with developers including Third.i Group, Time & Place, Orchard Piper, and Chapter Group.
In 2022, following the sale of his $3.3 billion stake in Crown Resorts, Packer sought to simplify his investment portfolio concentrating on big tech stocks, AI and property. As at 30 June 2024, Packer holds almost $500 million of Nvidia, $452 million of Meta and $366 million of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.