After spending some much-needed and well-deserved down time following the sale of his first major success, BankLink, MacDonald is so far keeping a low profile as an active and passive investor in international equity markets.
His active investments have been mainly through NZ Ice Angels but he also explores the wider New Zealand investment community and is an independent director of New Zealand start-up technology company Datagate Innovation. He is also the director-investor of D’Arcy Polychrome, which intends to “disrupt the existing global decorative paint market” – a company perhaps far better suited for MacDonald’s training as an engineer.
But he, along with Derek Jones and Steve Agnew, made his fortune from a digital accounting company founded in 1986. Their aim was to provide a time-saving service to accountants and their small business clients by transferring data directly into the accountants computerised systems.
BankLink now automates and streamlines the accounting process for more than 4500 accounting practices and over a quarter of a million small business clients across New Zealand and Australia. It was acquired by MYOB in 2013 for $136 million, of which he pocketed $50 million.