Bond, who once owned the Nine television network, real estate and brewing empires, who bankrolled winning the America's Cup away from US yachting teams for the first time since the trophy's inception in the 1800s, also put together the ground now occupied by the Super Pit gold mine in Western Australia, but his impact in the oil patch was perhaps not the one he wanted.

In the oil and gas space he sold in and out of, launched bids for, acquired and offloaded Australian petroleum groups HC Sleigh and Ampol Petroleum and Claremont Petroleum, but it was his audacious bid for Santos in the 1970s that changed the laws of the land.

In the 1970s Bond, flush with cash from the Poseidon nickel boom, moved for control of Cooper Basin oil and gas player Santos.

The South Australian government was having none of that nonsense and after Bond's finances were criticised in the parliament the laws were changed to prevent a change of control at Santos.

The anti-Bond legislation, which restricted a single shareholder from controlling more than 15% of Santos, protected the company from overseas control for more than 30 years and was only lifted in 2008.

After 28 years Santos argued that the cap hampered its growth opportunities since it prevented its share price from bearing any takeover premium and made it difficult to launch scrip-based acquisitions.

There had been speculation that Santos would be a prime target for a break-up after the cap was removed, but that never happened.

Together with other millionaires, notably Robert Holmes a Court, Bond even took a tilt at BHP.

Bond and Homes a Court went down with the Bell Resources ship following the 1987 sharemarket crash, with $1.2 billion in cash siphoned off to prop up Bond companies.

What was labelled "Australia's biggest corporate fraud", which included the deception over the sale of a painting, Manet's La Promenade, resulted in a lengthy trial that saw Bond, who claimed memory issues, sent to prison for four years in 1997.

Some of the Bell legacy issues remain unresolved today.

On his release he moved to Europe, and by the 2000s, thanks to assets that had been parked in family trusts in the 1970s, he was back on the BRW Rich 200 list again with a worth calculated at $265 million.

However, prices for his African diamond and oil interests in Madagascar collapsed, and he soon off the list.

Bond died in Perth on Friday, aged 77, following complications with heart surgery.