Extraordinary generosity and spectacular fallings-out have characterised Sir Owen Glenn's business career over many decades.
The millionaire businessman and philanthropist is still waiting on a $49.4 million payment from his former business partner, Eric Watson, who he pursued in a British court for several years.
Glenn took Watson to court over a disputed joint venture that he invested $250m in and last year won the case. While he's got his $250m back, he's now on the warpath for interest - saying he'd "pursue him to the ends of the earth" for the remaining payment.
This year Glenn said he had pulled his funding from the New Zealand women's hockey team after coach Mark Hager resigned amid concerns over conduct and coaching style.
He also suggested this year Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern should visit the Fijian island of Malolo after Chinese developers illegally ruined his land there.
Glenn said he was locked out of his land on Malolo Island and waste, including human sewage, was dumped on it.
The Fijian government cancelled the developers’ resort plans.
Though a New Zealander, Glenn was born in Calcutta in India and his family immigrated to New Zealand in 1952 when he was 12.
He was educated at Mt Roskill Grammar in Auckland and then worked for Bank of New Zealand and later for TEAL, now Air New Zealand.
But Glenn hasn't lived in New Zealand since 1966 and most of his business career from the 1960s onwards was spent overseas and included stints with Britain's Swire Group and Cathay Pacific before he went into business for himself in 1976 and set up, with a partner, Sydney-based freight company, Pacific Forwarding Group.
He was knighted in 2013 for his services to philanthropy.
Sir Owen had established his Glenn Family Foundation in the early 1980s.
He had been introduced to the Catholic charity Caritas in the old Portuguese enclave in Macau. His foundation began making donations with the main focus on serving the people living in the villages of West Bengal, India. It was here that Glenn’s foundation vision of helping whole communities by improving their health and well-being in a tangible, direct way took root. He spent the next 20 years making significant donations, supporting innovative projects, and delivering basic need supplies such as water filtration systems, latrines, spectacles, and other essentials to communities primarily in Australasia and India.
Sir Owen has also supported the Millennium Institute of Sport and Health in New Zealand which opened in 2002. He has been a key component in ensuring high-performance athletes of New Zealand have the necessary facilities and environment to train at and to stay competitive with the rest of the high-performance sports in the world; At the opening of the Sir Owen Glenn Aquatic Centre in 2017, the then minister of sport, Murray McCully, said that without Sir Owen’s support of $2.7m the project could not have come to fruition.
In 2003, Sir Owen supported the Auckland University Leigh Marine Laboratory with a $500,000 donation. “I made my living from the ocean, so it was nice to be able to support this particular initiative,” Glenn said.
In 2005, he made one of the largest private-sector donations amounting to $7.5m for the University of Auckland Business School. Due to his generosity the building was named after him.
In 2017 Glenn created the H.E.L.P.S. programme, which offers ambitious young adults the opportunity to serve the underprivileged and those in need. H.E.L.P.S. stands for Health, Education, Love, Protection and Spirituality; the chosen representatives have all reasonable expenses paid and are offered a sizable honorarium for their six months of service in the field.
He has also funded a scholarship for Auckland University business students.
Photo: Getty Images
2018: $450 million