Adrian Burr

"Meanwhile, Gibbs’ nephew Andrew Wall, his sister Wendelin’s oldest boy, had been investing in commercial property in Wellington and spied another good opportunity in May 1991. The New Zealand Railways Corporation was selling a large parcel of surplus properties, some 2700 in all, scattered throughout the country. The tender documents said that, all together, the leases generated just over $7 million a year, but information about the individual properties was sketchy. Everyone knew the parcel would include ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’.[31](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477273-050103421-31) Having seen the mismanagement of assets in the Forest Service, Gibbs knew that the Railways Corporation’s property book would be a mess. As well, since the country was in the middle of a severe property slump, he knew that there wouldn’t be much competition from other bidders. Wall and Gibbs combined with Gibbs’ former Unity colleagues, Mark Wyborn and Adrian Burr, to take the lot for around $55 million. Gibbs and Wall took all the properties south of Taupo; Wyborn and Burr took those to the north. In Gibbs’ assessment, the sale wasn’t handled well by the Crown: *The government’s neglect of the business it owned was mind-boggling. We bought blocks of land that at our purchase price yielded 14 per cent per annum and yet half the leases hadn’t been reviewed for 10 years. There were bad debts that hadn’t been collected; it was a shambles. Then to cap it off, the government failed to deliver us some of the properties, so we sued it for incompetence. The damages we received were nearly half the purchase price. It was a perfect example of how poorly the state looks after its assets.*[32](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477273-050103421-32)"

"However, in 1995 when he’d seen that the Ports of Auckland were selling 18 hectares of waterfront land immediately west of the CBD, Gibbs thought back to the value that had been lying dormant in the surplus railway land in 1991: ‘I knew it would be a mess, that no one would see the value in this tangle of leases and that there’d be an opportunity.’ Farmer, meantime, had earlier been shooting in Britain with a party that included the Duke of Westminster. He’d been enthused about the power of long-term leasehold estates with returns that adjusted for inflation. Gibbs and Farmer prepared to compete for the land, but once again discovered that the other most serious bidders, Gibbs’ and Farmer’s old Unity colleagues, Mark Wyborn and Adrian Burr, were people they knew and it made more sense to work with them."