Fisher Fund Management founders Carmel and Hugh Fisher have been enjoying some downtime after selling out of their successful business last year.
The couple, who founded the fund management company from scratch in 1998, sold it to TSB last August for $90 million.
“It’s always difficult to let go of your baby and Fisher Funds is my baby, but I know it’s going to a good home,” Mrs Fisher said after the sale, which propelled the couple on to the Rich List.
“My husband and I have devoted he last 20 years to Fisher Funds and it’s been all encompassing. I’ve got my own investments to look out for, and some philanthropic interests as well. But there’s going to be a bit of sitting on the deck and taking in the view.”
The couple started the business when fund manager Mrs Fisher was at home on maternity leave, and attracted $50 million investments within two years from companies like Barramundi and Kingfish.
From this it grew, through key acquisitions, into New Zealand’s fifth largest fund manager, with more than 255,000 clients and funds totalling $7 billion.
The Fishers clearly have a good eye for a bargain. In August 2016, they bought one of Auckland’s swankiest addresses.
The asking price for Chateau de La Sur Mer, on Takapuna’s Clifton Rd, was $35 million but they knocked it down to $22 million. The 1730sq m is more than eight times the size of a normal large house and sits on nearly half a hectare of land.
Mrs Fisher, who remains on the Fisher Funds board, was awarded an INFINZ Fellowship in May, recognising her career success and the wider contribution she made to the finance and capital markets industry.
She is also on the boards of Fisher Funds, Kotare Capital, Marlin Global, Barramundi, Kingfish and NZ Trade and Enterprise.
Mrs Fisher, who is of Maori and Lebanese heritage, retains shares in a $2.2 million lower North Island dairy farm and some ancestral Maori land near Levin.
The parents of two teenage daughters, the Fishers also own a holiday home worth more than $3 million on 9ha near Leigh.