John Young

John Carlton Young is a British-born Australian accountant and businessman, who established the Great Southern Group, an agribusiness managed investment scheme (MIS) group of companies. Great Southern Group was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1999, and went into administration in 2009. In 2006, Young was listed in the Business Review Weekly (BRW) 'Rich List' with an estimated worth of A$184 million; however much of that fortune was in shares in his company, which by 2009 were almost valueless.

Personal life and career prior to the Great Southern Group John Young was born around 1948, He is married to wife Sheila, In 2009 he lived in a large property in wealthy beachside Perth suburb, City Beach.

Great Southern Group 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. 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. By this time Great Southern was facing significant business challenges, its share price had slipped and it was not meeting sales targets.

By 2009, the global economic downturn, and regulatory uncertainty associated with MIS schemes, was putting Great Southern under financial pressure. On 16 May 2009 Great Southern Group appointed administrators under the Corporations Act 2001, with the companies' assets passing into control of receivers. In July 2009 the receivers determined that the company was insolvent.