More than 20 years before he was charged with assault after allegedly swinging an iron at his wife’s head, media mogul Antony Catalano had already been accused of running a “boys’ club” and behaving aggressively towards women.
It was 2004 and Aileen Keenan, a property editor at The Age, had sued the newspaper for gender discrimination on the basis that her male predecessor in the role earned $354,000-a-year – more than three times what she was offered.
But according to reports on evidence provided by one senior editor at the time, the man in question, Catalano, was a “persuasive negotiator” whose high salary was an anomaly.
“He knows how to get the best [for] himself and how to persuade senior management, by which I mean the publishers, that they can’t afford to lose him,” editorial executive Ken Merrigan said.
Keenan also claimed that Catalano, part of what she described as the newspaper’s “boys club”, had paid a mate $600 a week to write a “ghost column” that was, in fact, prepared by staff at The Age. When she confronted him about this, Catalano had gotten “very aggressive”, she said in a statement to the tribunal reported at the time.
“Catalano then lost his temper and shouted ‘Are you calling me a f—ing liar, because you’re the f—ing liar,’” she alleged.
Keenan’s claims that she’d suffered sexual discrimination failed, although the tribunal did find the paper had breached equal opportunity laws by not giving her a company car, a privilege that was afforded to Catalano.
Her other claims about Catalano foreshadowed the media mogul-in-waiting’s colourful career, which came to a thudding halt last week when he was charged with assault, false imprisonment and making threats to kill a woman.
Years later, as chief executive of property website Domain, Catalano would again be accused of running a “boys club”. Rumours of his aggressive streak had been growing well before he appeared in court last Friday, where he was accused of dragging his wife, Stefanie, around an apartment by her hair and ankles and swinging a clothes iron at her head in an alleged assault that left her with a broken coccyx.
The incident came after the pair had attended a friend’s 40th birthday at a Greek restaurant in Richmond. According to a source close to the alleged victim, Catalano’s wife was missing clumps of hair. A representative for Stefanie Catalano confirmed on Friday that she was the alleged victim.
But in the past, any concerns about Antony Catalano’s character rarely crescendoed above the level of whisper, drowned out by a louder, catchier tune – that the man was a highly charismatic rainmaker, an energetic business leader who charmed his way to the top.
Catalano, 59, began somewhere far closer to the bottom, with about as close as the Australian media gets to a log cabin story.
The child of working-class Italian immigrants in suburban Melbourne, Catalano spoke little English before starting at Sacred Heart Primary School in Oakleigh. After being rejected for a cadetship at The Age out of high school, Catalano was working in a fitter and turner factory when News Corp offered him a job as a copy boy at The Sun News-Pictorial in 1985, a predecessor of The Herald Sun.
From there, Catalano became a police rounds reporter, travelling to crime scenes in a red Volkswagen Karmann Ghia sports car, his first shift coming the night of the Hoddle Street Massacre in 1987. Three years later, he was poached by The Age, and in the mid-1990s, was tapped by then editor Alan Kohler to become the paper’s property editor.
At the time, Catalano already had an interest in real estate, making a small profit renovating a warehouse in Windsor with his friend Scott McIlroy, now a seasoned Melbourne real estate agent at Belle Property.
Staffers who worked alongside him at The Age early in his career described a gregarious, ambitious man who was going places.
“A big part of him being successful is he’s really personable. He’s a lot of fun to be with,” said one former editor at the masthead.
Two things stood out: One was that Catalano started adopting the mannerisms, attitude and attire of the real estate agents he hung out with. The other was that “he was fond of a good time”, another former editor said.
Catalano’s career really took off thanks to Greg Hywood, who moved him into the advertising side of the business in 2001 when he became The Age’s editor-in-chief. Two years later, Hywood was ousted by chair Fred Hilmer. In 2008, Catalano followed his mentor out the door after being made redundant. Shortly after, Catalano’s second wife, Shara, told him she wanted a divorce.
Armed with a $970,000 payout and a chip on his shoulder, Catalano retreated to his Byron Bay holiday home.
What happened next is the stuff of well-trodden legend. Catalano created The Weekly Review, a free glossy weekend property magazine, with help from real estate mates. The publication also got its start thanks to a loan from Catalano’s then girlfriend Stefanie, a former flight attendant who would become his third wife, mother of the younger four of his nine children, and the victim of the alleged assault on March 13.
The Weekly Review became a hit, eating Fairfax’s lunch by way of the $20 million in revenue it ripped from the media company’s rival publications.
Hywood returned to Fairfax, and as acting chief executive, among his first calls was to Catalano.
“I’m ringing to try to fix this mess you’ve created for us,” he said, according to several profiles of Catalano.
Kohler, Hywood and McIlroy declined to comment for this piece. Keenan and Merrigan were contacted for comment.
Catalano sold his Metro Media Publishing back to Fairfax back to the tune of more than $100 million in two separate transactions. He was appointed chief executive of Domain, and fixed the mess by turning the property listings site into a $2 billion juggernaut that was spun out as an ASX-listed company in 2017.
“I’ve got no particular desire to do that,” Catalano told The Australian Financial Review in 2015 when asked about rumours of him leading a post-float Domain.
“I don’t know if my personal make-up is suited to being a public company CEO.”
Catalano was onto something. He resigned as Domain chief executive after just two months, citing family reasons, before hightailing it to Aspen.
He was trailed out the door by a laundry list of complaints by men and women about a sexist culture that had been allowed to fester under his watch at Domain, including allegations that male managers referred to women as “doll” and “babe”. Catalano denied any wrongdoing and said the allegations were untrue.
But he’d get another life when, in 2019, he teamed up with billionaire investor Alex Waislitz to buy a suite of regional newspapers off Nine, owner of this masthead, for $125 million.
After last week’s charges, Waislitz distanced himself from Catalano, who has stepped down from his position as executive chairman at Australian Community Media, and other board roles.
Catalano checked into a rehabilitation centre this week after he was bailed in Melbourne on March 13.
“I am deeply ashamed and humiliated,” he said in a statement. “I know that my actions have caused hurt and concern for others, including the woman involved, my family, friends, colleagues and the many people connected to the businesses I have been privileged to lead.
“Those close to me have been urging me to seek professional help for some time and there have been interventions by close family and friends,” he said. “I regret not heeding their advice and I continued to believe I could hide my mental health issues.”
In the 2015 Australian Financial Review profile, Catalano had insisted he was not a big drinker. “Anyone who knows me will tell you that,” he said.
Over a decade on, Catalano’s work hard, play harder schtick has unravelled.
What’s left of his empire – a multimillion-dollar property portfolio and associated business interests – appears to be crumbling too. As this masthead reported, his plans to sell a $30 million luxury St Kilda penthouse in the St Moritz Building were put on ice after the charges against him. Previously, Catalano had struggled to sell the apartment, which the largely Byron-based businessman uses as a city pied a terre, reducing the price multiple times.
Catalano is also unable to find a buyer for a $9.25 million penthouse at Mt Buller in the Victorian Alps. Stefanie Catalano is set to return to the couple’s $9 million Byron Bay home on exclusive Wategos Beach, while her estranged husband is in rehab for the foreseeable future. Catalano’s plans for a $29 million 4000-square-metro rainforest compound on that glamour strip has raised community ire, been the subject of one council rejection, and an appeal to the NSW Land and Environment Court, with amended plans released this week.
The businessman also owns Byron’s exclusive Raes on Wategos (which did not respond to questions about its owner) and is planning another $29 million boutique hotel in the town. In 2021, he bought villas in Bali with property developer Josh Mantello, with the dream of expanding the Raes boutique empire to Seminyak. As of 2026, the development is still listed as “coming soon”.
Property may have been the making of Catalano. But his own recent real estate moves have been far from successful.
The business empire too is looking increasingly shaky. Waislitz released a statement saying staff at their companies would be “supported and heard”. ACM’s general manager Tony Kendall told staff he was “pissed off” by the allegations against Catalano. Kendall also insisted ACM, which has undergone an aggressive program of cost-cutting and redundancies in recent years, was not for sale. View Media, Catalano and Waislitz’s online real estate portal which uses AI for property searches, has not hit the heights of Domain, recording a $23 million loss in 2025 and a $30 million loss in 2024.
In the background, Catalano is locked in a fiendishly complex court battle with former friend and corporate raider Nick Bolton, who claims that his former business partner appropriated his stake in ACM. The pair’s relationship soured in late 2024, with Catalano upset (among other things) that his son, Luca, a financial analyst at Bolton’s Keybridge Capital, had not been paid a bonus.
Last year, Catalano cut a deal with Bolton’s rival Geoff Wilson to oust him as chief executive of Keybridge. Bolton later began court action, claiming that Keybridge had a 16 per cent stake in ACM, and that Catalano engaged in a breach of trust by appropriating it. The Federal Court initially denied Bolton leave to bring an action, with his appeal, heard by Justice Erin Longbottom this week.
But Catalano’s whole career has been a series of narrow escapes. In 2005, then still at Fairfax, he was locked in legal battle with a builder he’d commissioned to build a house in Portsea, who took Catalano to the VCAT alleging he owed $71,000. A confident Catalano counter-sued because “my claim’s bigger than their claim”.
But then Sabroni Pty Ltd, the builders in question, went into liquidation before the tribunal could make a ruling.
Such episodes have helped create mythology around Catalano and his “nine lives”.
He might have lived his last. Catalano, a mainstay of gossip columns before his fall from grace, was meant to appear in the pages of the April edition of WISH, The Australian’s glossy luxury lifestyle magazine, for an article on tourism and the expansion of his hotel portfolio. A full photoshoot had already taken place at Raes in Byron Bay.
After last week’s charges, the story and photos were pulled.
With Cameron Houston
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