Australia's animal spirits held up comparatively well in the financial meltdown, thanks to abundant resources and links to Asia. Now they're really surging at the prospect of several big-ticket initial public offerings -- especially the one that lets the tabloids revisit the saga of the deceased cardboard king, his so-called love child and a mistress spurned.

The Australian Financial Review wrote Thursday, Feb. 4, that privately held Pact Group Pty. Ltd. is exploring a A$1 billion ($865 million) IPO for midyear. No confirmation from either the packaging manufacturer or its reported investment bank advisers, Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB) and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM).

Other possible listings include Australian assets of the port operator DP World, which is part of the distressed Dubai World empire; the Australian subsidiary of German construction giant Bilfinger Berger AG; and the state-government-owned Queensland Rail.

Nothing, though, will elicit more popular buzz than Pact Group, owned by a daughter and son-in-law of Richard Pratt. One of Australia's richest individuals, Pratt died last April of prostate cancer at age 74.

In 2001, Pratt's packaging and recycling empire, Visy Industries Holdings Pty. Ltd., bought plastic and metal packaging assets for approximately $800 million from Southcorp Ltd., now part of the Fosters Group Ltd. The next year, son-in-law Raphael Geminder led a friendly buyout of those assets. Terms weren't disclosed. The Pact Group has since made a number of manufacturing-related acquisitions.

But as Australia's rambunctious tabloids will tell you, there's a lot more to the story than that. In 2000, Pratt made national headlines when a nanny revealed the married industrialist had sired a "love child" with a young socialite and lawyer named Shari-Lea Hitchcock, who, the press revealed, was Pratt's longtime mistress. Hitchcock became -- most often willingly -- a favorite subject of gossip mavens. "Mistress permitted deathbed visit to Richard Pratt," confided one headline.

Even before Pratt died, media speculation ran rampant about how Pratt's grown children had gained control of the business empire and what Hitchcock and her child would -- or wouldn't -- inherit from the $4 billion estate. That preoccupation continues. Melbourne tabloid the Herald Sun offered this headline when news broke of the possible IPO: "Shari-Lea Hitchcock gets boxed out again."