Starting out as a message boy at the Sydney stock exchange, he used his instinctive feel for the market as a private stockbroker to profit many wealthy NSW families, including cricketer Donald Bradman’s.
Poker and stockbroking
In the 1960s and 1970s, over poker games and tennis matches, he became friends with media barons Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer, and Ted Harris, who ran Ampol Petroleum.
He founded Pembroke Securities the following decade. The firm, which would be partly bought by the FAI life insurance group, was designed to take advantage of a surge in stock trading driven by the growth of superannuation savings.
With his brother, Robert, the Constables took control of a small listed company called Hancock & Gore. In 1985 they convinced an accountant working at Citigroup, Kevin Eley, to become chief executive.
The three men, initially as activist investors and then as private equity specialists, grew Hancock & Gore’s valuation from $5 million to $150 million. Their investments included a garnet mine in Geraldton, Western Australia, which they bought for $500,000 and sold for $10 million, according to Eley.
People skills
David Constable in his 40s. Sarah Constable
Eley, who knew Constable almost as well as anyone, says he doesn’t really know why Constable was such a successful investor, but his disciplined mind was demonstrated by his conversational style, which was different to the loquacious or jargon-filled approach of some modern CEOs.
“He wouldn’t talk for an hour,” Eley says. “He would get straight to the point. He was very smart [but] he wouldn’t be theoretical.”
One test of character is a willingness to help others. Constable played an important role in the rise of Peter Hall, the founder of Hunter Hall International, an investment manager which merged with Pengana Capital Group in 2017 and now oversees $3 billion.
Godfrey Pembroke, a financial advice firm co-founded by Constable, provided a lot of the capital used by Hall to list his company on the sharemarket. As a shareholder in Hunter Hall, Constable supported the Pengana merger, a transaction that led to a bitter split between Malcolm and Alex Turnbull, the former prime minister and his son, and their ex-business partner, Russel Pillemer, Pengana’s CEO.
Hunter hall founder Peter Hall last May. Domenico Pugliese
Constable had other sources of wealth, and lived for a while in Monaco, which does not collect income or capital gains taxes.
Ceremonial wine
In 1981 he bought a vineyard in the Hunter Valley with his best friend, the late Michael Hershon, another Jewish businessman who owned the Berlei intimates brand.
Their vineyard, formerly known as Constable and Hershon, is still thriving as Constable Estate. Hershon was one of many Sydney Jewish businessmen of his generation who enjoyed the status that came with frequent media coverage. They included Peter Abeles, Frank Lowy and Rene Rivkin.
Constable was devout, quietly. He insisted his children practice Shabbat every Friday, a Jewish ritual in which a prayer is said over wine. Wife Ida Lichter, a psychiatrist, became an internationally recognised critic of the treatment of women in Islamic societies.
His eldest child, from an earlier marriage, Julian, 63, is a stockbroker at Bell Potter. His 61-year-old sister, Virginia, worked in the arts industry.
Thirty-three-year-old Sarah Constable is a barrister who specialises in company law and markets regulation. Her 31-year-old brother, Joseph, is an investment manager and Hancock & Gore director.
The family refuses to discuss its wealth, and Constable never appeared on a rich list.
All his younger daughter will say is: “He was very content with what he had. He had a great marriage to my mother, and he knew how lucky he was. He valued other things, like making a practical contribution, and enjoying life on a daily basis. He didn’t seem to need external recognition.”
Which may be why he died happy.