Grant Baker of The Business Bakery admits it’s been a “less rather than more” year.
Baker says most of his focus has been on the sale of skincare and fragrance company Trilogy.
The Business Bakery held a 31.22% stake in the company, bringing in about $66 million after its $211 million takeover by Citic Capital China Partners on March 14.
Baker, the chairman, told NBR the company lacked the financial backing to take it forward at a fast rate.
But beer company Moa, in which The Bakery has a 13.72% stake, won’t have Baker smiling – its shares have dropped 27% over the past year, and were trading at just 50c when it was sold.
Baker also has a 5% holding in Turners Automotive Group, whose shares have dropped 16.67% to $3 in the past year.
The Bakery’s website says it intends to invest only through its investee companies in future.
Having survived bowel cancer, Baker is a director of the Gastro-Intestinal Cancer Institute (CICI), which he co-founded in 2009 with Professor Michael Findlay and fellow cancer survivor Paul Hargreaves.
Baker’s cancer was diagnosed in 2006, the year he and his partners sold vodka business, 42 Below, to Bacardi for $138 million.
Investors did extremely well out of that sale, gaining about an 18% annual return.
The Business Bakery paid just over $2 million for its stake and recouped $69.3 million from the Bacardi deal.
It was Baker’s involvement in raising money for GICI that revealed one of his hobbies, collecting expensive cars.
In 2015, he put four of his Ferraris on public display at Turners’ Auckland headquarters as part of a fundraising drive and admitted to also owning three 1960s Jaguars and a Lotus Cortina.
“The collection has grown bigger and better as I’ve made more money,” he told media at the time.
Baker was chief executive of Ubix Business Machines and Eric Watson’s Blue Star Group until its sale in 1997. He went on to become executive chairman of electricity retailer Empower, which was bought by Contact Energy in 2000 for $23 million.
Baker has also built an impressive portfolio of about 50 properties, mainly in the Auckland region.
Photo: New Zealand Herald/newspix.co.nz