The recently departed chief of Finbar Group reflects on his 30-plus years at the company.
Darren Pateman can trace his interest in property back to his teenage years.
The former Finbar Group managing director recalled meeting his family friend and property developer, Graeme Robertson, who inspired him to pursue a career in the field.
“My father, Warren Pateman, said, ‘You always need to have a project’,” Mr Pateman told Business News.
“Dad’s interest was mainly building boats. My interest in property came from his close friend Graeme Robertson … I always admired the DNA of the housing he created.”
Mr Robertson was behind several land subdivision projects, including at Nullaki Peninsula in the Shire of Albany.
“I, of course, admired his lifestyle,” Mr Pateman said.
“This is what I think spurred my interest, which came later in my teenage years.”
The other end
Darren Pateman stepped down from one of Perth’s largest apartment developers, Finbar Group, in June after more than three decades at the company.
“Apart from cleaning cars for neighbours and the usual kid jobs, my first real job was actually as a decky on a passenger ferry my parents operated in Mandurah when I was fifteen,” he said
At 16, Mr Pateman took a job at Kmart in Garden City, in the toy department. There, he saved up to put himself through flying school.
“If you can survive Christmas in a toy department, in the same year Cabbage Patch Kids were in a frenzy, you can survive any stress life can throw at you,” he said.
Mr Pateman made his first solo flight on his 16th birthday and obtained his private pilot’s licence at 17.
That same year, he opened his first business, Harbour Laundrette, in Fremantle. It was a gateway to what he really wanted to do.
“It gave me enough cash flow so I could take the risk and go into property,” Mr Pateman said. At 19, he got a job at real estate agency Keoh and Thorogood, in Applecross.
The agency, which was a Professionals franchise, offered a unique proposition for Mr Pateman as it specialised in off-the-plan sales.
It was through this work that Mr Pateman met Finbar Group’s executive chair, John Chan, and former director Rick Rimington.
Finbar Group’s first project at 8 Stone Street in South Perth was developed in the mid to late 1990s. Photo: Finbar Group
Roots
Mr Chan, then a recent immigrant from Malaysia, teamed up with Mr Rimington to work on property developments around Perth.
The pair met Mr Pateman around 1990, when he helped broker sales for some of their apartment projects.
“They eventually reached the point where they couldn’t operate out of a briefcase any more,” Mr Pateman said.
“They decided they wanted to set up an office and asked me to join. “It was basically three of us in a unit that John owned in Labouchere Road in Como.
“John had the master bedroom, Rick had the second bedroom, and I was shoved in the back of the third bedroom.
“The first cheque we wrote was for my computer for my desk; that’s how life began.”
The private development business was the precursor to Finbar Group, which began in 1995 when it floated on the stock exchange as a property company.
The name Finbar was plucked from a defunct shipping company that had previously delisted.
Mr Pateman recalled his early years at Finbar as constituting a solid learning curve.
“[It] was like going to business school every day,” he said.
“John Chan was a very experienced developer in Malaysia and ran a large, listed Malaysian company before immigrating to Australia.
“He was very generous in guiding me, imparting his wealth of knowledge, and giving me the opportunity to be exposed to every process required to develop property.
“There were initially just three of us so we had to do everything, including cleaning the toilets.”
Mr Pateman worked up from company secretary to managing director by 2008, a path he said was far from expected.
“We just went to work every day and did what needed to be done,” he said.
“Ultimately, both John and our other largest shareholder in Singapore, Chuan Hup Holdings, were very generous in supporting me into taking the role and took a punt on a young man, for which I am incredibly grateful.”
Finbar Group’s inaugural project was at 8 Stone Street in South Perth; a $4.9 million, three-storey development comprising 15 apartments and dubbed Seville on the Point.
South Perth holds special significance for Finbar and Mr Pateman, who was born and raised in the area.
Launched with a market capitalisation of about $2 million, which has since grown to $220 million, Finbar developed its most significant project in South Perth.
Civic Heart in South Perth, completed in mid-2024, was both challenging and rewarding for Mr Patman. Photo: LP Visual
The $450 million Civic Heart project comprises 309 dwellings across two towers and sits on a triangular block once predominately owned by the City of South Perth.
At 38 storeys and 140 metres at its highest point, Civic Heart is Perth’s largest residential tower.
The project took a decade to come to fruition, with Finbar acquiring the land in 2014 from the City of South Perth.
The acquisition, which formed part of a tender process by the local government, preceded Finbar’s purchase of an adjacent post office from Australia Post.
In 2015, Finbar Group gained approval from a Joint Development Assessment Panel for a $380 million, 294-dwelling apartment tower on the 8,208 square metre site.
It went back to the drawing board two years later following an amendment to the area’s town planning scheme requested by Finbar.
In 2017, Finbar Group went back to buyers and refunded their deposits, in a bid to change the scale of the project.
Mr Pateman recalled this as the most difficult moment of his career.
“It was actually the first project we’ve ever cancelled in our thirty-year history and returned deposits to buyers and effectively started again,” he said.
“That was not a pleasant moment, when I had to write to all our buyers and say, ‘Guess what, we’re not going ahead, here’s your deposit back’.”
A revised proposal, comprising 320 apartments across two towers, was rejected at a JDAP meeting in 2019.
In a rare occurrence, the issue was taken up by then planning minister Rita Saffioti, who stepped in to override local authorities and approve the project.
By then, almost five years had passed since Finbar Group bought into the development.
In the interim, the company had proceeded with apartment projects in Applecross, Rivervale and Maylands.
By that point, the group also had a healthy bank of developments in East Perth, where it is based.
To date, Finbar has delivered close to 3,000 dwellings in East Perth. Mr Pateman said Civic Heart was a standout project for several reasons.
Among them is his connection to the location, given he went to kindergarten on the site where the apartment building now stands, and at its launch recalled playing with toy diggers in the dirt underneath.
“In eighty-hour-plus work weeks, [it was] an absolute master class in resilience to get this project finished, in the most difficult time certainly in our company’s thirty-year history,” Mr Pateman told those gathered at Civic Heart’s launch in June 2024.
“We’re here today because in 1986, the City of South Perth had the foresight to begin the strategic objective of acquiring the lots they didn’t already own on this land.
“The land they did own was the South Perth Kindergarten … and I know that because I attended that kindergarten. In that playground was a sandpit with an old timber-framed excavator and a crane that was as tall as I was at the time and was held together with rusty wingnuts.
“It was my favourite toy, so technically I started work on this project fifty-one years ago as a four year old.”
Evolution
Civic Heart aside, Mr Pateman said, the past three years had been among the most challenging for him as a developer.
“[It] has been pretty tough with construction prices,” he said.
“We had three massive projects under way. Civic Heart, we had Aurora in Applecross, and we had The Point at The Springs [Rivervale] all under way simultaneously.
“[This was] in a time where government has got so many infrastructure projects under way, all pulling on resources, and rampant building price escalation post-Covid.
“That was a very stressful period to manage, but we got through it, and Finbar is in great shape because of it.”
The company’s ability to deliver a significant development pipeline is partly due to its ongoing partnership with builder Hanssen, which works on all Finbar’s projects.
Latest developments are its $277 million Garden Towers project in East Perth and the $113 million Bel-Air apartments in Belmont.
Mr Pateman was there for the launch of both developments and Finbar Group’s new chief executive Ronald Chan will be there for their completion.
In terms of Mr Pateman’s next move, the recent divestment of his apartments.com.au domain name to Victorian entrepreneurs Mike Bird and George Glover has put him in a good position for some potential down time.
The recent deal is believed to be one of the top 10 URL transactions in Australian history, with Mr Pateman having owned the domain name for more than 20 years.
Not that the former Property Council of Australia WA Division vice-president (2019 to 2025) is going to stray too far from business.
“I’d like to stay connected in the corporate space … it would be a shame to have thirty years of listed company experience and not continue in that,” Mr Pateman said.
“I’m looking around for the right project. It will definitely be property related.”
