Some are of the opinion that Sir Owen Glenn, 78, is holding grimly on to life so he can see fellow Rich Lister Eric Watson six feet under first, at least figuratively speaking.
Well, he’s had his day in court and he’s claiming victory after a High Court judge in London handed down a verdict in the pair’s dispute involving assets worth nearly $250 million, including extensive property holdings in Britain, held by their former joint venture called Spartan Capital.
It involved Caribbean tax havens and allegations of dirty tricks rooted in the intense enmity between the pair.
The judgment was severe on Watson, ruling he’d obtained Sir Owen’s investment in Spartan by fraudulent misrepresentation, despite their former friendship. The judge said Watson was secretive and deceptive when setting up the joint venture with Sir Owen.
Watson says he will appeal the decision while compensation claims are to be heard in September.
Sir Owen himself, who is battling liver cancer, says the judgment vindicated his position in the complex and long-running litigation.
“Eric Watson has behaved appallingly. I saw him as a close friend but he was trying to rip me off. Once I knew what had happened, I was determined to get justice.”
Another headline the dying knight has chalked up this year is his withdrawal of a $4.5 million donation to the Waikato medical school as an “expression of frustration” with the Labour-led government in discounting the proposal for a third medical school.
In an email to the university, Sir Owen, well-known for his political donations to the Labour Party in the past, described Labour’s attitude towards the proposed new medical school as “both short-sighted and political.”
When Sir Owen does finally succumb to the dictates of mortality, he is expected to leave much of his fortune to charity.
He already has a solid track record of donating to universities, including last year pledging a $2.6m gift to the Auckland University Business School following previous donations of $5m in 2015 and $7.5m in 2002.
In 2010, Sir Owen told the New Zealand Herald why he is such a passionate backer of universities.
“I left school at 15. My father was very ill so I never had a chance to go to university. I used to go down Symonds St on the trolley bus …. and I’d see all the students and I used to really have a heart attack about it. I’d think: “God, I’d love to be increasing my education. That stuck in my craw.”
Nevertheless, he did later attend Harvard University.
Sir Owen revealed his illness in April 2016 when he told the Sydney Morning Herald about his precarious state of health while in Australia for the $A4 million Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick.
Though a New Zealander, Sir Owen was born in Calcutta in India and his family immigrated to New Zealand in 1952 when he was 12.
He was educated at Balmoral Intermediate and Mt Roskill Grammar in Auckland and then worked for Bank of New Zealand and later for TEAL, now Air New Zealand.
But Sir Owen 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.
Although knighted in 2013 for his services to philanthropy, Sir Owen has tended to be in the limelight for political reasons – he was famously at the centre of a row over whether he had funded Winston Peters and the New Zealand First Party – or because of fights with fellow businessmen.
Those included former friend and business partner David Miller, who he sued in 2014 in a dispute over control of his family trusts.
His daughter, Jennifer Connah, won back control of the trusts that same year.
Sir Owen also generated unwanted headlines after he funded the Glenn Inquiry into domestic violence, which reported in late 2014 and which has led to no change so far.
Sir Owen voluntarily deregistered his Glenn Family Foundation Charitable Trust, which had given more than $33 million to charities around the world, in late 2014 after a Department of Internal Affairs investigation into alleged financial irregularities.
At that time, Sir Owen said he was giving up on charitable work in New Zealand, complaining about the media obsession with digging up scandal but clearly failed to make good on that threat.
Photo: Adrian Malloch