Even when legendary corporate raider and investor Sir Ron Brierley announced his retirement in June, he couldn’t resist effecting one final deal.
Brierley, who was chairman of Mercantile Investment Company, sold 18.8% of his stake in Mercantile to Sandon Capital Investments in exchange for Sandon shares, making him the biggest shareholder in both companies. A merger of the two companies was being arranged.
“I believe this is in the best interests of all,” Brierley, who turns 82 in August, said in a statement to the ASX announcing his retirement because of age and health. “If the merger is successful, I am confident there are good prospects for the enlarged Sandon.”
Sandon, an Australian-based activist investment firm, has made an offer to buy all the shares in Mercantile that it did not already own.
Brierley continued to hold 25% of Mercantile after becoming chair in 2015. His company Siblow also owned a further 37%. Mercantile’s biggest investment was $21.46 million in retirement village operator Ingenia Group, which has a market capitalisation of about $700m.
Mercantile launched hostile takeovers of Australian shipping company Richfield International and Wizard Home Loans founder Mark Bouris’ Yellow Brick Road. They failed, with Bouris saying the offer was grossly inadequate and it would deprive shareholders of the full strategic value of their investment.
That smacked of Brierley’s investment mantra – he eyed companies which were undervalued, took ownership, plucked out the value and sold for a good profit.
Mercantile was Brierley’s fifth major listed investment company following Brierley Investments, Industrial Equities, Industrial Equity (Pacific) and Guinness Peat Group.
Wellington-born Brierley started Brierley Investments in 1961 without any capital. By 1984 it was the largest company in New Zealand by market capitalisation and in 1987 (the year of the sharemarket crash) had 160,000 shareholders with a stake in more than 300 companies including Paris department store Galleries Lafayette and Air New Zealand.
Brierley Investments’ star was lost in the sharemarket crash. Brierley finally retired as director of the company he founded in 2001 but he had already moved on. In 1990 he became chairman of Guinness Peat, another corporate raider company which was renamed Coats Plc in 2015. Brierley then moved on to Mercantile.
Brierley, who has lived for decades in Sydney, is one of the world’s largest buyers and sellers of stamps, a hobby he picked up when attending Wellington College in his youth.
He’s also a huge cricket fan beginning his association at the Basin Reserve, the home of Cricket Wellington, in 1952 as a schoolboy scoreboard attendant. A pavilion at the ground has been named after him and he was president of New Zealand Cricket in 1995.
Brierley was knighted in 1988 for his services to business management and the community.
2018: $220 million