Colourful Australian businessman Alan Bond dies

Alan Bond, the high-flying Australian businessman, America's Cup hero and convicted fraudster, died on June 5 aged 77 following complications from open heart surgery.

His children John, Craig and Jody announced his death outside the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, where he had been in an induced coma since surgery on June 2.
 
"His body finally gave out after heroic efforts of everyone involved here at the intensive care unit at Fiona Stanley Hospital," their statement said.
 
"He never regained consciousness after his surgery on Tuesday."  

Bond, a larger-than-life entrepreneur, became a national hero when he led a team that won the America's Cup yachting crown from the United States in 1983, bankrolling Australia II's historic victory over Dennis Conner's Liberty.
 
But his empire crumbled in the 1990s and he was eventually bankrupted. In 1996 he was convicted of swindling Aus$1.2 billion (US$800 million at the time) to prop up his ailing Bond Corporation.
 
He served three years in jail for what was then Australia's biggest corporate fraud.
 
Bond, who emigrated from Britain at 11 with his parents and left school in Australia at 14, worked first as a signwriter, before making a fortune in property development.
 
It allowed him to start the Bond Corporation which had brewing, mining and media assets, including Australia's Nine television network which he bought from fellow tycoon Kerry Packer before later selling it back to him.    

At its height, it was one of Australia's biggest business empires, owning overseas interests including the St Moritz hotel in New York, which he bought from Donald Trump, and the Lippo Centre in Hong Kong, which used to be called the Bond Centre....