After having surgery for throat cancer in 1979, the first thing a doctor said to Neville Crichton was that he would have to give up boating.
“I checked myself out of hospital and did the Trans-Pacific Ocean Race,” he recently told the Robb Report.
It’s an attitude that saw Crichton move from selling bicycles as a child, into building New Zealand’s largest used car business.
In the mid-1980s he built Sydney-based Ateco into an automotive powerhouse while also creating New Zealand’s superyacht industry with his company Alloy Yachts. However, Alloy closed in 2015 when the industry went into decline.
Ateco Group imports a range of European, Korean and Chinese marques into New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. It has recently spent $45m to move its headquarters from Waterloo to just outside Sydney's Olympic Park to be more centrally located in the city.
Crichton is also among the world’s most accomplished yachtsmen, with a win in the UK’s Fastnet, the US Transpac and twice line honours in the Sydney Hobart race.
He now travels the world, made easier with an apartment in Monaco as well as his $A40 million mansion in Sydney's Point Piper waterfront.
He lives there with his 39-year-old wife Nadi Hasandedic, a former Christian Dior boutique manager.
Photo: Getty Images
2018: $150 million