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Richard Chandler (businessman)

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(Redirected from Richard Chandler (New Zealand businessman)) New Zealand businessman

Richard Chandler
Chandler in 2018
BornRichard Chandler
1958 or 1959 (age 65–66)
New Zealand
Alma materUniversity of Auckland
OccupationInvestor
TitleChairman, Clermont Group
SpouseMarried
Parent(s)Robert Chandler
Ana Tzarev
RelativesChristopher Chandler (brother)

Richard Fred Chandler (born 1958/1959) is a New Zealand-born billionaire businessman. He is the founder of the Clermont Group, a conglomerate based in Singapore. Chandler "has a reputation for buying struggling companies and successfully rebuilding them," according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation News. He is chairman of the Clermont Group.

Early life

Born in Matangi, New Zealand, Richard Fred Chandler is one of three sons of businesswoman Marija Chandler and her husband Robert Chandler, a beekeeper. Marija and Robert co-founded the luxury department store Chandler House in 1972 in Hamilton, New Zealand. Raised in Waikato, Richard Chandler attended Auckland Grammar School in Auckland with his brother Christopher. Chandler obtained a bachelor of commerce from the University of Auckland in 1979. He wrote his master's thesis at the same institution in 1982, researching board structure and accountability in New Zealand. At the University of Auckland he earned a degree in law in 1982.

Career

Early years (1980s-2006)

Chandler began his career at Arthur Andersen in Auckland, New Zealand. He started working at KPMG in London in 1982. Later that year he returned to New Zealand to become the CEO of Chandler House, the family business. After selling the company he moved to Monaco, where in 1986, Richard and his brother Christopher founded Sovereign Asset Management, their own investment firm. With US$10 million in starting capital and Richard serving as CEO, by in the late 1980s the company focused on Hong Kong real estate.

With Sovereign Asset Management renamed Sovereign Global, in the 1990s the Chandler brothers began investing in companies in Latin America. Between 1986 and 2006, Sovereign also invested in companies and governments in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, and in industries including telecommunications, electric utilities, steel, oil and gas, banking and oil refining. In 2003, Sovereign invested $168 million in purchasing a 15% stake in SK Corp., a large South Korean conglomerate. In the several years afterwards, the Chandler brothers were involved in a highly publicized conflict with the SK Corp. board. They ultimately sold their stake in 2005 after the board rebuffed their efforts to replace SK Corp. chairman and CEO Chey Tae-won, who had been convicted of accounting fraud for illegal stock trades. The Chandler brothers profited US$728 million from the investment before selling.

The Chandler brothers were the wealthiest business people in New Zealand by late 2006. That year, Richard's investment style at Sovereign was described as deep value investing, primarily in global emerging markets and especially in distress situations. In 2006 he told Institutional Investor that "we do have altruistic motives that some investors who are looking for a path of least resistance find hard to understand, but we don’t want to be defined by our corporate governance battles. We are value investors with a sense of responsibility, not activists."

Clermont Group (2006-present)

See also: Clermont Group

Richard and Christopher Chandler split their assets at Sovereign in December 2006, with Richard creating Orient Global and Christopher starting Legatum Capital. Originally based in Singapore, Dubai, and London, Orient Global changed its name to Richard Chandler Corporation in April 2010. The company founded Newtown International, an educational service, in Bangladesh in 2011. According to the Santangels Review, Chandler's business ventures by 2011 had been tinged with themes of contrarian investment, corporate governance and social responsibility, especially by investing in and managing companies with national socio-economic implications. It was reported in 2012 that Chandler had considered investing in the Tasmanian logging company Gunns, but decided not to.

The Richard Chandler Corporation became the Chandler Corporation in 2013. In June 2013 the Chandler Corporation acquired an 80% stake in Hoan My Medical Corporation, the largest private hospital group in Vietnam, for US$99 million. The Chandler Corporation also owned and operated healthcare companies in Indonesia and the Philippines. As of 2022, Chandler’s company is the sole owner of Hoan My.

In the Forbes Rich List of 2014, Chandler was only one of two billionaires with New Zealand nationality, with a net worth of US$3.8 billion. In 2015, he also owned a 19% stake in InterOil Corporation. The Chandler Corporation became the Clermont Group in 2016.

Philanthropy

In 2007, he formed a US$100 million education initiative focused on building low-cost private education projects in India. He was invited to be a core partner in Co-Impact, a philanthropic organization, in 2017. Other core partners at the time included Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeffrey Skoll, Romesh and Kathy Wadhwani, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Personal life

He is married to Kady Leyau, a businesswoman, former model, actress, and Taiwan MTV VJ.

References

  1. ^ "Forbes profile: Richard Chandler". Forbes. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  2. ^ "Secrets of Sovereign". Institutional Investor. 16 March 2006. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
  3. ^ Gunns Saviour a Reclusive Billionaire, ABC News, February 2012.
  4. ^ "Our story". Legatum. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
  5. ^ Kumar, Kalyan (18 May 2015). "New Zealander Richard Chandler: Forbes Lister and The Big Player in Equity Markets". International Business Times.
  6. ^ McSheehy, Will (10 October 2006). "Chandler Brother split interests". New Zealand Herald.
  7. Richard Chandler: Alice in wonderment - a new age of electric flight, New Zealand Herald, 16 October 2022{{citation}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  8. "Honoured alumni database: A–C". University of Auckland. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
  9. "Secrets of Sovereign". Institutional Investor. 16 March 2006. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
  10. ^ "The World's Billionaires (2009)", Forbes, November 2009.
  11. ^ McSheehy, Will (9 October 2006). "New Zealand's Chandler Brothers to Divide Investments". Bloomberg.
  12. ^ Joseph, Blessing (24 February 2022). "Richard Chandler Net Worth, Wiki Bio, Source Income, Salary, Earnings, Nationality, Age". SNBC13.
  13. Crossley, Jazial (11 January 2013). "Chandler Corp go for Kiwi CEO". Stuff.
  14. "Richard Chandler, Sino-Forest, and how $10 million turned into $5 billion", Santangels Review, July 2011.
  15. "Gunns blames Greens for billionaire blow", The Sydney Morning Herald, March 2012.
  16. Tan, Le (13 June 2013). "RCC owns 80% of Hoan My Corporation". Dautu online (in Vietnamese).
  17. "Chandler Acquires Hoan My Medical's 80% stake". BioSpectrum Asia Edition. 12 June 2013.
  18. "Chandler Corporation Acquires an 80% Shareholding in Vietnam's Hoan My Medical Corporation", Yahoo! Finance, June 2013.
  19. "What's behind Kiwi billionaire Richard Chandler's big new move". NZ Herald. 30 September 2022.
  20. "Leading Philanthropists Announce Co-Impact, A Global Collaborative for Systems Change, with US$500 Million in Planned Initial Funding". Co-Impact. 15 November 2017. Retrieved 6 April 2018.
  21. "Belmont Rd GCB fetches S$33.8m or S$2,243 psf". businesstimes.com.sg. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  22. "Luxury bungalows at Belmont Road, Sentosa Cove sold for more than $33 million". edgeprop.sg. Retrieved 27 August 2018.

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