New Zealand entrepreneur, described as an equivalent to the American Donald Trump. When Sir Ron Brierley retired as a director of Brierley Investments on the company’s 40th anniversary, 3/31/2001, it represented the end of an era for the company. He had not been active in the group since 1990, focusing instead on Guinness Peat Group.
The company expected that news of his retirement would book a loss, along with poor results from its key investments, Air New Zealand and James Hardie Industries. The prior year the company lost almost a billion NZ dollars (US $608 million) and looked like it was about to sink. In a remarkable turnaround, Brierley Investments reinvented itself. It sold half of its assets and refinanced its debt. (It held 60 assets as recently as June 1998.)
The result: a turnaround, with profit of NZ $113.5 million (US $59.9 million) for the fiscal year. Now the company is putting further touches on its makeover by planning a move from New Zealand, where it has been since the 1960s, to Singapore, where it will place its head office, list on the stock exchange and establish a base for investing in Asia.
Sir Ron reached his present pinnacle as a big-time corporate player due to his innate wariness and his heavy emphasis on research. Even in the heat of the 1980s he rarely made a play without good research and a strong concept of what he was doing, whereas hotshots in the field frequently shot from the hip. Though dot-com punters made overnight fortunes on hot internet stocks, Sir Ron’s message was that if you don’t know what you’re doing, this is an expensive place to find out – and find out you will, sooner or later.
With his shrewd approach, he is close to the only survivor of the big-time corporate players of the 1980s. Though the gregarious entrepreneur left the company for other pastures, he maintains a seat on the board.
Link to Wikipedia biography