On 26 September 1983 an Australian team led by the entrepreneur Alan Bond won a yacht race contested only by the very wealthy: the America's Cup. The New York Yacht Club had defended the Cup successfully for the previous 126 years. The euphoria generated by this victory prompted the prime minister, Bob Hawke, to endorse an unofficial public holiday: ‘Any boss who sacks anyone today for not turning up is a bum!’ Bond returned to Australia a hero. He represented, said Hawke, ‘the kind of tenacity with which Australians and Americans can identify’, adding: ‘Coming on top of the success of Australian films in the United States, we are now firmly registered with Americans as a country worthy of attention. The economic benefits to Australia…will be very substantial.’ It is notable that the call for attention turned rapidly from sporting prowess to economic advantage. Also apparent is the portfolio approach to marketing on the world stage, as the yacht race was added to ‘the success of Australian films’. Such preoccupations with a global marketplace are integral to this chapter.

Bond's trajectory reveals much about the 1980s and 1990s. He was both a kind of Everyman and a rapacious practitioner of crony capitalism. At his most successful, he attracted wide popular support. A migrant boy who began as a sign-writer but reached the pinnacle of corporate success, he capitalised on his achievement as a battler winning against the odds. He exploited the emerging celebrity culture to capture public attention: his greatest sales job was his own story. He was an audacious risk taker both in business (where he specialised in takeovers) and in politics (where he used his wealth, celebrity and media influence to support State and federal governments, in return for deals that benefitted his own interests). All the time, he was ‘constantly dealing between his public and private companies, selling assets backwards and forwards, charging fees, receiving commissions, providing services in exchange…you could never know where the profits would end up…but you always expected a large portion would find its way into Alan's pocket’.