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New Zealand’s richest man Graeme Hart is a former truck driver and high school dropout
- The 64-year-old is among the world’s most private billionaires, but he isn’t shy about spending lavishly and is a serial buyer of superyachts
- He dropped out of school in his mid-teens and worked as a mechanic and truck driver before earning an MBA from the University of Otago
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Graeme Hart was once a high school dropout working as a mechanic and truck driver.
Today he is New Zealand’s richest person, thanks to a career in private equity, with a taste for superyachts, submarines and superhero-themed pinball machines.
Last week, his fortune got a boost after the stock-market debut of Reynolds Consumer Products, the maker of Hefty trash bags and aluminium foil.
The shares climbed 9.8 per cent to close at US$28.55 on Friday, valuing his stake in the company at US$4.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The advance continued on Monday, with the stock rising an additional 3.7 per cent.
Hart, 64, controls a majority stake in Reynolds through Rank Group, his Auckland-based private equity firm, and the consumer-goods business is his biggest asset. A spokeswoman for Rank declined to comment.
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