The site of the Ted Manson Foundation's social housing development in Glen Eden, Auckland, with Sir Paul Adams (left) and Ted Manson inset. Photo / NZME
Sir Paul Adams and Ted Manson have a lot in common. Both are property developers and commercial investors, both started out in a state house, both give generously to charity, and both were nominated this month for the NZ Business Hall of Fame.
In August they are due to join five others honoured for their life’s works and achievements: ex-Telecom chief Theresa Gattung, former Auckland Business Chamber boss Michael Barnett, Ngāi Tahu tourism leader Wally Stone, dairy pioneer Kingi Smiler and Underwater World founder the late Kelly Tarlton.
Each laureate has a story of enterprise, hard work and success, and most have contributed generously to their communities.
Adams and Manson have similar lives and careers. After growing up in state houses, both went on to be extremely financially successful.
Between them, the two men have created billions of dollars of assets from building houses, large office blocks, apartments, multi-tenanted retail buildings, industrial hubs, big box shopping centres, land development and forestry.
Their careers have also involved finance - Seventh City Finance in the case of Tauranga’s Adams, and NZ Mortgages & Securities, founded by Aucklander Manson.
And both are now increasingly focused on philanthropy, bringing considerable expertise to charities to help some of our most downtrodden people: Adams set up the Bethlehem Charitable Trust, while Manson established the Ted Manson Foundation.
The two don’t know each other that well, but agreed reluctantly to share their remarkably similar life stories and outlooks. Both men have paused to reflect on their roots, families and lives, and to open up a little about their views and charities. They are speaking because they were asked, not seeking publicity, but acknowledging the Hall of Fame entry pushes them into the limelight a little more than usual.
Adams is 74. Manson is 68.
Adams, a civil engineer, is the executive chairman of Carrus Corporation, one of the Bay of Plenty’s largest land businesses, developing about 10,000 residential, commercial and industrial lots in the past 40 years. He is also a philanthropist who founded the trust and was the inaugural chairman of Accessible Properties, owned by IHC. Accessible Properties has grown into New Zealand’s largest non-government organisation housing provider, he says, and he takes pride in that.
Adams has also been a director of many companies, including Crown entities, and is a fellow of the NZ Institute of Directors.
He recalls tough times as a youngster.
“Poverty wasn’t in the form it is today. In the 1950′s and ‘60s there was little unemployment, nor were there government handouts for solo mothers, so I watched as my mother had to take on employment to pay the rent and feed my brother and me and encourage us to study hard. There was little money left each week to enjoy the nicer things in life,” he recalls.
The teenage Adams mightn’t have known exactly what “social conscience” meant, “but always knew I needed to consider others and help them when I could. This certainly moulded my business ethics as I worked out the balance between being financially successful and having a social conscience to help others”.
Adams thinks a hand up is better than a handout. “That has been my main driver in philanthropy, while of course doing my share to help those who can’t fend for themselves and do need a financial handout.”
Manson is the second generation involved in New Zealand’s largest privately-owned commercial investor and developer, Mansons TCLM, as well as the founder of the philanthropic Ted Manson Foundation. He and his father Colin, who died in 1998, together established Mansons in 1975 and now Ted’s sons Culum, Luke and Mac run the business.
Like Adams, Manson had a state house upbringing before going on to develop a property business which has built billions of dollars of assets. The foundation, meanwhile, has built social housing apartment towers in Auckland’s heart and in Glen Eden, bought vans, buses and ambulances, and is now particularly focused on helping our most vulnerable children in low-decile schools.
He has built $160m-plus of social housing and describes a type of epiphany which prompted him to take an entirely new direction.
“I used to think ‘if I can come up from a state house, anyone can’ but as you get older, you start to realise life is not fair. Not everyone can do it. I woke up one day and I got a social conscience. That happens at some stage of your life for some, but not for all. Up until then, I was a capitalist,” Manson said in 2018.
In 2014, he founded the Ted Manson Foundation with $7.5m seed capital.
Manson became an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2015 and a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit in 2022.
For his part, Adams is a knight and became a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit in 2015.
For Adams, life’s biggest pleasure is the satisfaction of reflecting on his successful business career, which has allowed him to provide for his family including grandchildren, and also being able to help friends, not-for-profit organisations and others who are more vulnerable.
He is also proud of son Scott, who studied business at Waikato University, got his Masters degree in property at London University, returned to join the family company 20 years ago and is now managing director of Carrus Group, continuing with large land and commercial building developments
Adams said he was able to develop his skills by studying engineering and business between the mid-60s and mid-70s while working full-time, but on paid leave.
By then he had the skills to work in serious engineering construction businesses before starting his own business around 1980, with a focus on property. He was also the largest kiwifruit industry operator in the 1980s before selling to Fletcher Challenge, then focusing on land and building development.
That allowed him to ensure his family was financially secure and to use his engineering and business skills to help not-for-profit organisations, which he said fulfilled a social conscience developed in his early years.
These days, Manson’s biggest joy in life is his 10 grandchildren: “I see them all on a regular basis and love being with every one of them. My wife Maria is a joy for the love and fun we have together, plus my three sons who are all so different but are fabulous caring fathers and so skilled at what they all do in business.”
Adams says the harder he worked, the luckier he got. He never refers to people he works with as “my staff”. Instead, they are a team and he says if you employ the right people, they work with you and not for you. Some people have been with the business for more than 30 years.
Manson also says his staff are crucial to the success of his business, with many also working with him for more than three decades.
He has a saying: “Move on, that’s history”. He encourages people to change what they can, but to forget about what they can’t.
The best business advice Adams ever got was to always leave something in a deal for the other party, and always to look at it from that other party’s perspective. Being fair to others pays off over time, he says. He is proud of the many business partners and friends he has kept for the past 40 years. Repeat deals are built on trust.
For Manson, the best advice he ever got was, “don’t talk or think too much, just listen and learn. This worked well as you have to understand what the other person wants or needs and then you can understand how to move forward. As you get older, this comes naturally, so I now give this advice to others.”
But equally important advice he gives is, don’t worry about what you can’t change. If you have a problem, do your best to fix it and if you can’t, move on. Real problems can be solved - or not. Personal problems are all in your mind, he reckons.
The biggest influence in Adams’ early business life was John Cameron, now 89, his first private enterprise employer in the civil construction industry in Wellington. Cameron was a respected professional director and businessman who taught Adams real business disciplines and ethics and toned down his youthful enthusiasm in the highly competitive 1970s transport and civil construction sectors.
For Manson, his mother Rae and father Colin influenced him most. “My mother always loved me no matter what and taught me kindness. My dad was tough and uncompromising as they were back then, but he taught me to be mentally strong and resilient and to not give up, compete hard and win.”
Asked how people are benefitting from Adams’ philanthropy, the past councillor of Waikato University has been one of the driving forces behind the construction of the university’s new Tauranga campus. Adams’ charity has funded several aspects of that campus and will continue to do so annually as it expands.
He was chair of its property committee, critiquing designs and tenders, and was a member of its building control committee.
His Bethlehem Charitable Trust is also providing half the funding for Mt Maunganui’s High Performance Sports Facility, planning to help St John buy a new Tauranga ambulance, and helping various causes after the Auckland, Napier and Gisborne floods. He is a patron of hospice, IHC Bay of Plenty, the Homeless Trust and gives to the SPCA, Riding for the Disabled, IHC, Tauranga community functions and many other charities.
In the year to the end of last month, 2023, the Ted Manson Foundation donated $2.375 million to many different charities.
Its money has widespread benefits including Sir Ray Avery’s Help@Hand for domestic violence, Sir John Walker’s Find Your Field of Dreams Foundation, Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter, Mike King’s I Am Hope, a new ambulance annually for St Johns with six in total so far, as well as education and transport.
Since 2014, 16 vans and five buses were given to schools and charities. Counselling and sports equipment were provided for 25 low-decile schools. About 6100 students in the last financial year and an estimated 10,300 students in the next financial year will benefit from the foundation.
As for its social housing developments, about 90 tenants live in the Liverpool St tower in the Auckland CBD and 171 tenants at Westlight, Glen Eden. The foundation developed both projects.
Asked about the Bethlehem Charitable Trust’s plans, Adams says that at 74 he’s at the tail end of his working career but he doesn’t want to retire. He handed over the company reins to his son Scott and took the chairman’s role in the development company, which keeps him close enough to things but also gives him time to help various not-for-profit organisations, as well as mentoring.
The Bethlehem Trust and some of Adams’ private funds help support many worthy organisations. It has gifted a growing, seven-figure sum annually during the past few years.
Adams thinks his worst mistake was trusting an Auckland merchant banker in 1990 with the bulk of his hard-earned working capital to invest in supposed funds in Europe that had a locked-in margin.
He knew him from a previous business relationship in the kiwifruit industry, so never undertook the normal due diligence.
The Herald reported in 2000 that Adams lost $5.8m to former Citibank executive Graeme Kenneth Rutherford, convicted and jailed for six years, five months.
Rutherford took funds from several experienced Auckland businessmen. Adams was left without the capital he had built up in the development industry. The loss taught him to undertake more thorough due diligence on any business proposition - whether it involved a friend or business contact. It also taught him that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
Manson’s biggest regret is buying leasehold land. He is an advocate of freehold title - unencumbered, not incurring annual rental payments and without all the restrictions that go with leasing. He says he learned the hard way, having bought leasehold years ago and losing a fortune. Never again.
Asked about their legacies and how their charities will continue in the coming 25 years, Adams says the Bethlehem Charitable Trust has a succession plan for trustees, including outside professional trustees, so it will continue according to that plan.
The Ted Manson Foundation has $3m allocated this year but Manson says that figure will increase each year, giving away tens of millions during the next decade.
The foundation’s focus is on underprivileged, vulnerable communities who are disadvantaged by deprivation and geographical inequalities, particularly Māori and Pacific and mostly in South Auckland. But during the next few years, it will look to increase its presence in West Auckland, Manson says.
“Our main focus and funding assistance will be dedicated to our educational assistance programme where we will have a long-term, ongoing relationship with our 25 foundation-supported schools. It is our intention that this will grow substantially over the next few years with an increase in dedicated funding,” Manson said.
Adams would change nothing in his life although he reflects that it would be nice to have started his career with the knowledge and financial strength he enjoys today.
Manson would only change one thing: buying leasehold land. That, he says, was one of his life’s biggest business lessons.
Adams’ family, wife Cheryl and close friends are most precious to him, but he says his weakness is enjoying owning top European cars. He doesn’t have a helicopter or big superyacht and he doesn’t gamble, but he admits he does indulge in nice cars.
Most precious to Manson is his wife Maria because she understands, loves and looks after him. They laugh together and are happy, he says.
New Zealander with colourful history finds himself in third continent's courts.