Fiji

"My SPP shares lost their value: first 30 percent, then another 30 percent, then another 30 percent. We went from HK$5.40 down to 60 cents. Secondly, the mortgagors for our various hotels, if they had a chance, called back their debts. It was just like the property boom and bust in Canada later, in the eighties. Everybody was panicking. My main supports were all based in England. My cash flow became very precarious because land sales at Pacific Harbour simply came to a halt, but once you start building a hotel and it’s three-quarters of the way finished you can’t stop. We had big hotel projects at Narita, the new airport in Japan, and in Auckland at the harbour; and a major shopping centre in the middle of our Fiji development. We couldn't stop any of it."

"As always, David Gilmour was essential to Munk and the Fiji project. He was doing his bit around the world and I was doing my bit at home. Without David, Fiji wouldn't have gone. My part was more the formulation and the strategy. David did the outside work; he was not a strategist. David sometimes heard more about the difficulties than I because I was more hardedge to deal with. I was very pushy and very aggressive. It was very important to me. I had really thought about every aspect of Fiji, I knew it could be done, and I was very impatient."

"he year 1968 was a crossroads in Peter Munk’s life. He spent the summer on his island in Georgian Bay. His fertile mind was busy putting together two elaborate schemes. One was a sophisticated international securitized mortgage-financing plan. The other was an off-the-wall development project in Fiji."

"*I think global warming is the best possible thing for mankind. Its effect will be mainly in the northern hemisphere from 50 degrees north and all those countries are freezing, miserable dumps most of the year. There’s no clear evidence that cyclones are caused by global warming, the earth’s temperature is always changing. Is it good or bad, who knows? But I can’t see why anyone who lives in the cold parts of the earth wouldn’t* *see higher temperatures as better … I’ve always said that New Zealand would be best if it was dragged north halfway to Fiji. Even the most radical projections of global warming wouldn’t get New Zealand warm enough.*[5](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477353-680641757-5)"