John Young was born around 1948,[1] and came to Australia in the early 1970s as a Ten Pound Pom.[2] He is married to wife Sheila,[3] and has two sons John Jnr and Aaron.[4] In 2009 he lived in a large property in wealthy beachside Perth suburb, City Beach.[3] Young was an accountant and property manager; he was reported to have sold a "lucrative stake" in his accounting firm just prior to the 1987 stock market crash, using the funds to establish Great Southern.[2] Great Southern has since been his principal business interest, Young not being a director of any other listed company,[5] however he has had other shareholdings, including in a Perth property firm, West Star Trust.[4]
Young avoids publicity: a photograph taken for a news story in 2006 was 'the first time in years Young...agreed to pose for the media'.[1]
Established by Young in 1987, Great Southern was a company that sought to take advantage of government plantation and taxation policies that made tax-driven investment in agroforestry an attractive prospect.[1] It began with plantations in Western Australia, and was floated on the stock exchange in 1999. Young retained a large shareholding in the company as its founder and CEO. He was a director of the company from 27 May 1991.[5]
In 2004, Young was included in the Business Review Weekly Rich List, his assets worth an estimated A$140 million.[3] Young sold A$32.6 million worth of shares in 2005.[3] Even so, in 2006 he still held 17 per cent of the company's shares, and BRW's estimate of his fortune had climbed to A$184 million.[1] His stake in Great Southern has been reported as having been worth as much as A$200 million.[2]
On 10 December 2007, Young announced he would retire as managing director from February 2008, though he would remain on the board and intended to retain his remaining shareholdings.[5] By this time Great Southern was facing significant business challenges, its share price had slipped and it was not meeting sales targets.[5] Young, however, indicated these issues were not connected with his stepping down: he was about to turn 60 and said "when you look at a five-year plan, you need someone to adopt that and take it forward for the duration. At 60, I did not want to do that again."[6]
By 2009, the global economic downturn, and regulatory uncertainty associated with MIS schemes, was putting Great Southern under financial pressure.[7] On 16 May 2009 Great Southern Group appointed administrators under the Corporations Act 2001, with the companies' assets passing into control of receivers.[8] In July 2009 the receivers determined that the company was insolvent.[9]