PAUL BARRY: Mistakes in Las Vegas apart, Daniel Petre believes his friend is way ahead in the decisions he's made over the years. And Peter Yates who was managing director of Packer's PBL until 2004 and helped steer the company into offshore casinos agrees even more forcibly.
PETER YATES: James is a brilliant strategist. An absolutely brilliant strategist and the strategy he put in place at PBL, the new media strategy, the gaming strategy - I mean how much money has that made? $5 billion plus.
Foxtel, Fox Sports, Seek, Car Sales, Ninemsn. I reckon he's probably made about 2.5 billion. And then the casino strategy, well I mean Crown and Burswood alone have made 3.5 billion. So James is a strategist.
PAUL BARRY: How can you call someone a brilliant strategist when they take a decision to go into Vegas and buy four or five different assets and each of them is worthless two years later.
PETER YATES: Well the thing about being…
PAUL BARRY: That's not great strategy surely.
PETER YATES: No, no what, look all investors, no investor gets it right all the time. Now obviously the Vegas investment is a big loss but compared to the whole strategy, it's just an unfortunate loss.