Latest / Best of Business / Hamish McNicol: NBR co-editor on the Mowbray family taking the top spot in NBR's 2024 Rich List

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Hamish McNicol: NBR co-editor on the Mowbray family taking the top spot in NBR's 2024 Rich List · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk st B.
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  Speaker 1: Heather Dup for c Ala.
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  Speaker 2: So this year's rich list, the Mobra family have dethroned
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  Speaker 2: Gavin Hart Graham Heart brother and I've already forgotten who
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  Speaker 2: he is Yesterday's man, Graham Heart. It's been named at
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  Speaker 2: the top of the NBR Rich list now Zuru, as
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  Speaker 2: you know, are owned as owned by the brothers Matt
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  Speaker 2: and Nick Mobray and the NBR Reckons. The estimated worth
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  Speaker 2: has reached twenty billion dollars. Graham Heart is now a
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  Speaker 2: distant second. He's got an estimated worth of twelve point
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  Speaker 2: one billion dollars and the collective wealth of this year's
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  Speaker 2: list has been put at ninety five zero point sixty
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  Speaker 2: eight billion, which is up twenty seven percent from last year.
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  Speaker 2: Hamish McNichol is the nbr's co editor with us Now Hamish, Hello,
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  Speaker 2: hey ever, how are you very well?
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  Speaker 1: Thank you?
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  Speaker 2: How have the Zuru boys managed to get this rich
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  Speaker 2: so fast?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an astonishing story and it's unlike anything I've
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  Speaker 3: seen before in business, particularly when you also consider that
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  Speaker 3: they don't have any external bank debt, taken a loan
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  Speaker 3: from the bank, and they've never raised any external capital either.
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  Speaker 3: They've just the whole time, they've just any profit they've made,
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  Speaker 3: they've reinvested it back in the business, and they've managed
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  Speaker 3: to make this just an incredible machine that's tuning out money.
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  Speaker 2: Somebody was saying to me that they've got an ambition
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  Speaker 2: like something crazy, like being the next Microsoft of that.
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  Speaker 2: Are they talking about that publicly?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Nick is quite open about wanting to be the
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  Speaker 3: next Tesler Google Apple. So we have them at three
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  Speaker 3: billion dollars revenue this year as a group, and Nick
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  Speaker 3: was telling us in an interview the other week that
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  Speaker 3: he wants to hit ten billion revenue in the next
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  Speaker 3: five years. That's so a long way off some of
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  Speaker 3: those companies, but you know, given how quickly they've grown
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  Speaker 3: and how big they are already, you can it's hard
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  Speaker 3: to bet against them at the moment.
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  Speaker 2: When you heard him say to you that the revenue
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  Speaker 2: was going to be three billion a year, did that
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  Speaker 2: shock you because you guys only had their value at
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  Speaker 2: three billion, Yeah, it did.
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  Speaker 3: We. I mean, they're a privately held company that we've
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  Speaker 3: never really got the sort of insight that Nick gave
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  Speaker 3: us the other week in that interview he did with us.
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  Speaker 3: I think they're at a point now where you know,
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  Speaker 3: most people know them as the toy company, and that's
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  Speaker 3: a two billion dollars a year business now, but they've
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  Speaker 3: also expanded and expanding into these other areas. So they've
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  Speaker 3: got the consumer products company, which is things like Rascals, nappies.
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  Speaker 3: They're making billions of nappies a year, Monday haircare products
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  Speaker 3: like that. So that is now recording a billion dollars
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  Speaker 3: of revenue in a year, and in just six years
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  Speaker 3: it's grown to that size. And now they're taking on
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  Speaker 3: automating the construction of property. They've bought a twenty five
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  Speaker 3: acre factory in China. They're starting to build test houses.
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  Speaker 3: The first ones of those should be up end of
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  Speaker 3: this year, early next year. And you know, if they
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  Speaker 3: tackle housing and can do it cheaper and more affordably
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  Speaker 3: across the world than who know, it's how big they
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  Speaker 3: can get.
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  Speaker 2: Are they just really clever?
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  Speaker 3: I think they're really clever. I think they are really
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  Speaker 3: driven and ambitious, and they're the sort of people who
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  Speaker 3: don't take no, you know, happy to happy to figure
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  Speaker 3: out how to do things their own way. I mean
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  Speaker 3: the way Nick talks about the processes that they've built.
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  Speaker 3: Every single component in the factories that they have has
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  Speaker 3: been built in house. They just are so precise on
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  Speaker 3: everything and how they put everything together, and I think
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  Speaker 3: that level of attention to detail and care just goes
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  Speaker 3: to show how they've got to where they are now.
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  Speaker 2: Some of the businesses that you have had looked at
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  Speaker 2: look at on this Rich List thinking about how to
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  Speaker 2: transfer their wealth to the next generation. Is there necessarily
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  Speaker 2: a next generation there?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of the family So we have
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  Speaker 3: one hundred and nine people profiled on the list this year,
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  Speaker 3: and more than half of them are classified as families
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  Speaker 3: rather than just individuals. And a lot of those families
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  Speaker 3: have been there for a long time and they're sort
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  Speaker 3: of onto their third or fourth generation of ownership within
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  Speaker 3: the family of the family business. But then they've also
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  Speaker 3: got other examples s Mark de Naichek and his partner
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  Speaker 3: Dorothy Spots with Dan and Wellington. They're donating all of
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  Speaker 3: their fortune, which we are semate to be about four
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  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars to the Nico Foundation in
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  Speaker 3: Wellington to give away. You've got Sukataki family, who we've
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  Speaker 3: made newcomers this year. They came over from Japan about
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  Speaker 3: fifteen years ago. They've got their still investment vehicle which
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  Speaker 3: has an ambition to invest in one hundred New Zealand
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  Speaker 3: companies over the next ten to twenty years. And all
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  Speaker 3: of those companies and ideas that they want to invest
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  Speaker 3: in are all about one hundred year timeframes and horizons
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  Speaker 3: as well. So this is thinking regardless of government, regardless
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  Speaker 3: of policies, all sorts of stuff. What sort of ideas,
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  Speaker 3: what sort of businesses can we back that will have
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  Speaker 3: intergenerational effects?
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  Speaker 2: Interesting stuff? And will there be an impact do you
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  Speaker 2: think on I don't know, the property market, things like that.
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  Speaker 2: As this money passes from generation to generation.
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  Speaker 3: Well that's the big thing, and that's what everyone is
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  Speaker 3: thinking about globally as well. It's estimated that there's US
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  Speaker 3: ninety trillion dollars of assets to pass down from the
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  Speaker 3: baby boomer generation to the next generation over the next
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  Speaker 3: ten to twenty years. And you know, if you are
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  Speaker 3: below the Baby Boom generation or even younger than that,
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  Speaker 3: and then your parents or your grand parents have built
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  Speaker 3: up all this wealth and they suddenly hand it to
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  Speaker 3: you what are you going to do with it? Are
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  Speaker 3: you going to put it into property? Are you going
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  Speaker 3: to stop working? Are you going to invest it? This
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  Speaker 3: sort of creates all sorts of questions about how people
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  Speaker 3: are going to handle this and what it means for
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  Speaker 3: the future of work and property and things like that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, very interesting, Hamish, thank you for your time, appreciating
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  Speaker 2: well done on the list. That's Hamish McNicol, mbr CO editor.
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