A cleaner who helped turn a modest Sydney operation into one of Australia’s biggest privately owned cleaning businesses has become the centre of a bitter inheritance battle years after his death, with rival family factions fighting over a fortune estimated at $28 million.
George Tsivis married Angela Sakellis in 1968. The following year, the couple launched the business that would eventually grow into the Broadlex cleaning empire, starting out with just two people in Sydney.
Although their marriage ended during the 1970s, George and Angela continued working together for the next 40 years. Their joint efforts built a multimillion-dollar company that now employs about 2,000 people and serves major corporate clients, including CBRE.
George died in October 2016, leaving an estate valued at nearly $28 million. It included properties across Australia, significant business interests and millions of dollars in other assets. Probate was granted to his brother, Peter Tsivis, his de facto partner Karen Leith Williams and his nephew Michael Tsivis.
His death soon triggered a complex succession dispute involving valuable company shares, annual payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and control of the fortune he had spent decades accumulating.
The legal battle would continue for years, outlasting several of the people who were originally involved.
George’s sister, Maria Sotiriadis, died in December 2022, while his former wife Angela died in October 2023. Despite those losses, the dispute over shares linked to Broadlex continued and eventually reached the NSW Supreme Court almost 10 years after George’s death.
The central issue was George’s interest in Sequoyah Investments, a company associated with the Broadlex business empire.
Broadlex founder George Tsivis is pictured in his office in 1988 with traditional cleaning equipment. He began his working life as a cleaner before building a multimillion-dollar business empire
George Tsivis and Angela Sakellis, pictured, married in 1968 before establishing the business that became the Broadlex cleaning empire as a small two-person Sydney operation a year later
George’s will required Angela to keep paying his brother Peter and sister Maria annual amounts equal to his $300,000 salary from Broadlex. Each sibling was to receive half of the payments, with the surviving sibling entitled to the full amount after the other died.
The will set out a path for Angela to inherit the valuable shares, but only if she met those payment obligations.
In a significant win for Peter, Justice Michael Slattery found that Angela’s estate had never become entitled to the shares because the annual payments required under George’s will were not made.
Peter will instead retain the benefit of the shares for the rest of his life. Once that interest ends, the multimillion-dollar asset will return to George’s estate rather than pass to Angela’s heirs.
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Justice Slattery said George’s intention was for Angela to “earn” the shares by making sure his siblings received the annual sums specified in the will.
“For years the parties were more focused on reaching a final settlement than making clause 11 work according to its true construction,” Justice Slattery wrote in his judgment.
He said both sides had allowed the arrangement to remain unresolved as negotiations continued, noting that “both parties gained some advantage in the negotiations from doing nothing”.
In one of his strongest criticisms of Angela, Justice Slattery concluded: “The probabilities are that she used the annuity as a bargaining chip.”
Broadlex has grown into a multimillion-dollar company employing about 2,000 people and counting major corporations such as CBRE among its clients
The judge ultimately ruled that Angela “only may receive” the shares by “earning them through consistent support for his closest living relatives by ensuring the specified payments are made to them”.
Court records from an unrelated Supreme Court dispute in 2019 paint a picture of Angela as a wealthy property owner who spent years helping struggling relatives.
A judge found she acted out of ‘genuine concern’ for family members after reconciling with her terminally ill niece Antonia in 2008. Angela later allowed Antonia, her husband Constantine and their two children to live rent-free in a Seaforth property she owned.
After Antonia’s death in 2010, she continued supporting the family, later moving Constantine into another North Manly property she owned. The relationship eventually broke down, sparking a separate legal battle when he refused to leave the home.
The dispute offered an early glimpse into the family tensions that would later surround the Broadlex fortune.
Peter won the battle for the shares, but the war is not over.
Justice Slattery reserved questions about who should control the trust holding the Broadlex-linked shares and directed the parties to consult on the appointment of a new trustee.
Nearly a decade after George Tsivis’s death, one of Sydney’s most unusual succession battles is still not over.
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