PEOPLE : Mysterious Texan Says He Is About to Rescue Bond

A little-known 28-year-old Texan has emerged as a possible savior of Alan Bond’s flagship Bond Corp. Holdings Ltd., caught up in a legal morass that threatens its survival.

Jeff H. Reynolds, who said during the weekend that he was interested in rescuing the debt-laden Australian brewing and media empire, has been instantly catapulted from a self-described “real private person” into the limelight of newspaper headlines.

On Monday, he said he had secured financing for a $197-million stake in Bond Corp. and is close to securing a total of $3.13 billion needed to acquire a controlling interest.

The company that Reynolds heads as chairman, Los Angeles-based Weatherby Investments Inc., is also a little-known entity. Its business address is a mail drop and it does not appear to be traded publicly as he has contended, officials said Monday. A news release from Reynolds listed an answering machine as a contact number.

His news release said Weatherby Investments is an over-the-counter stock and was traded on the “pink sheet” distributed by the National Quotation Bureau. The National Quotation Bureau and the National Assn. of Securities Dealers have no record of Weatherby, and it is not listed in guides to over-the-counter stocks.

Calls later to the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the California Secretary of State’s office revealed Weatherby was not listed in either agency as a public corporation. Legal experts said Weatherby should be listed at both, barring extenuating circumstances. Reynolds was surprised that the listing did not show up, but he added that his company, which is thinly traded, is exempt from filing quarterly and annual reports with the SEC because its shareholder base is less than 500.

Reynolds, who has been living with his mother in Houston since October, said Monday that Weatherby had earlier been known as California Pacific Industries, and he intended to change the name back. But there was no listing under that name either. Reynolds says Weatherby is a division of California Pacific International of Singapore, which was formed as a holding company last October to help Weatherby secure financing from Singapore banks.

The address and suite for Weatherby to which investors are invited to send questions is a private mail-drop box in Beverly Hills, even though Reynolds said he moved his operations to California from Texas a year and a half ago. Reynolds said his legal residence for tax purposes is Dallas, but he lives in Coldwater Canyon in Los Angeles and has a home in Belgium.

Reynolds said Monday his work was done from several offices.

Reynolds said Singapore investor Dr. Chew Chin Han, who has a 10% interest in California Pacific, first approached Australian financier Bond, whose Australian brewing interests are in the hands of receivers, early last fall. Chew, according to Reynolds, met in Hong Kong with Bond’s executive assistant Mark Barnaba, who confirmed the meeting by phone late Monday from Perth.

Barnaba said his company is waiting for “Reynolds to show he has the financial capability” to take a stake. Reynolds said he expects to go to Australia to meet Bond for the first time Monday.

Reynolds, a University of Texas dropout, described himself as an intensely private businessman who used to walk in his bankers’ side doors because he favored jeans and cutoffs. He says he still feels more comfortable in a sweat suit, crunching numbers at a computer terminal, than in a suit and tie.

“I’ve always had a real hard-core attitude about other businesses and banks--if they’re going to deal with me they’re going to have to know me and put up with me,” he said.

Reynolds’ Singapore associate, Chew, claims to be friends with Australia’s richest man, Kerry Packer. “He rang us last week with some weird and wonderful scheme for taking over Bond Corp.,” said Trevor Kennedy, managing director of Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings. “We said, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ ”