Former billionaire Alan Bond remained in an induced coma on Thursday after undergoing heart surgery.
Bond, 77, is in a critical condition at Fiona Stanley hospital in Perth after returning from London earlier this week for the surgery.
His daughter, Jody Fewster, said on Thursday morning that the family would release an update on his status later in the day. “We are going back to the hospital later [this morning] and we will put something out,” she told ABC radio.
His former wife, Eileen Bond, said earlier: “We’re praying and hoping that he pulls through this. It’s not looking good at the moment.”
She was flying back to Perth from London and due to land on Thursday afternoon.
It is understood the businessman became ill in London last week and decided to travel back to Western Australia for treatment.
Alan Bond’s children John, Craig and Jody released a statement on Wednesday saying their father had undergone open heart surgery to replace a valve that had been previously replaced almost 20 years ago.
“He also required repairs to two other valves in his heart,” the statement said.
“We are told his prognosis is at best uncertain.”
Jacqueline Lang, publisher of Perth website the Starfish, which broke news of Bond’s condition on Wednesday, told 6PR radio on that Bond had been unwell since Christmas and had a pacemaker put in earlier this year.
“Although he’s in the best of hands things haven’t gone too well and he’s now in an induced coma,” Lang said.
Bond is best known for being the first non-American to win the once coveted America’s Cup sailing trophy.
One of Australia’s richest men during the 1980s, Bond’s fall from grace began in 1992 when he declared bankruptcy.
He was jailed in 1997 for a $1.2bn fraud involving his takeover of Bell Resources and was stripped of his status as Officer of the Order of Australia, which he had received 13 years earlier.
Bond served three years before he was released in 2000 after a successful high court appeal. In 2008, he was named among the top 200 wealthiest people in Australia by BRW magazine with an estimated wealth of $265m.
Bond and his first wife Eileen, whom he married as a 17-year-old in 1955, divorced in 1992. The couple had four children together – John, Craig, Susanne and Jody.
Susanne was found dead aged 41 in her upmarket Peppermint Grove home in July 2000.
Bond married theatre producer Diana Bliss in 1995. She died in 2012.
Bliss stood by her husband during his jail sentence, making regular trips to prison to visit him.
