KEY POINTS:
Sir James Fletcher - Jim to his friends and JC to colleagues - stood tall as an icon of the construction industry in New Zealand.
He first took the reins as managing director of Fletchers Holdings during World War 2.
For the next 37 years, a crucial period in New Zealand's economic development, he expanded the empire with brave business decisions and a continuous battle against bureaucracy only to see it splinter after he retired.
James Muir Cameron Fletcher was the son of Sir James sen, the carpenter who arrived in New Zealand from Scotland in 1908 with a set of tools and a few pounds to establish the way to bigger business by building New Zealand's first 100 state houses.
Sir James inherited his father's charisma and unshakeable belief in big business.
In the years after World War 2, Sir James stamped his mark on the company. An observer noted his fierce loyalty to staff and their welfare.
In the 1940s Fletchers were at the forefront of worker relations bringing in a subsidised superannuation scheme, death benefits and a five pound bonus (almost a week's pay) for every child born to an employee.
During the early 1950s Fletchers joined the National Government to form Tasman Pulp and Paper at Kawerau, to process wood from the government's Kaingaroa forest. Although Fletchers had a only a small stake it scored executive control of Tasman.
By 1960 the plant was responsible for 20 per cent of the country's exports.
The firm fell foul of the government in the mid-1970s when strikes at the mill and government-imposed newsprint prices spelt trouble.
Then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon blamed Sir James, then chairman of Tasman, for the troubles; Sir James blamed the government.
Sir Robert, ignoring advice from Tasman directors, forced Sir James to resign as Tasman chairman.
Sir James was often at loggerheads with the bureaucrats whom he regarded as obstructive and frequently incompetent.
"If you wanted to build a Tasman today it'd take you up to 10 years to get through all the resource consents necessary to get things started," he said in an interview in 2001.
"Say it was going to cost $1 billion. In order to finance that you'd need half the equity and investors wouldn't get a dividend for 10 years. Who on earth in New Zealand could afford that?"
Sir James was also nationalistic in his views on ownership.
"I strongly believe that New Zealand's natural resources should be developed as far as possible by New Zealanders for New Zealand interests," he said in 1990.
He said then the government should be fostering large industries to provide some of the tools to allow them to compete internationally -- including cheap power.
In that interview he summarised the dilemma of big business: "To be internationally competitive you must have a clear advantage in one form or another, for example in technology, cheaper raw materials or more productive labour or a large domestic market.
"Under current philosophies New Zealand manufacturers have no specific advantages, but they do have the great disadvantage of high transportation costs to their export markets."
But regulation and bureacrats were not to hog-tie the drive of the country's first real industrialist.
Fletchers surged and merged, taking black sand from beaches on the North Island west coast and turning it into steel -- the birth of Pacific Steel -- and combining with Tasman Pulp and Paper and the Challenge Corporation to form Fletcher Challenge.
By the time Sir James' work was done the company was into energy, steel, pulp and paper, forestry and timber, construction and property, fishing and banking.
Despite the success, Sir James was said to have remained a man without a hint of pretension -- "one of the most down-to-earth people you could meet," said one observer.
In December 1979, after 37 years in charge, he stepped aside as managing director for his son Hugh to take over. Four months later he was knighted.
At about this time Fletcher Challenge had replaced NZ Forest Products as the country's largest listed company, a position it held until Telecom listed in the 1990s. It was the only NZ company listed on the New York, London and Australian stock exchanges.
During the 1980s Sir James remained company president. He had time to devote to his passion for horse racing, the Fletcher Trust he started which, in those days, was giving away more than $1 million a year, and Fletcher's New Zealand art collection.
The art collection he started to "get something decent on the walls to replace the girlie calendars".
In 1997 he was awarded the country's highest honour, membership of the Order of New Zealand.
But the fortunes of Fletcher Challenge were changing.
The bite from the Asian crisis was severe and pulp and paper prices were tumbling.
The company's survival plan was to slit the empire into separate companies -- and divided they were ripe for takeover. Fletcher paper and Fletcher energy fell to overseas raiders and a joint forestry venture with the Chinese went into receivership.
Sir James expressed his disappointment: "I think it's tragic that these businesses should be lost to New Zealand ownership and control, but there's nothing I can do about it -- that's for sure."
It was a big blow but not the biggest for Sir James. His son Jim was murdered at a Papamoa Beach house on New Year's Eve, 1993. Jim Fletcher had confronted four burglars and was stabbed in the heart with a bread and butter knife.
A 15-year-old Te Puke youth was later jailed for the killing.
For a man who was thunderstruck by the behaviour of some business colleagues that emerged after the 1987 sharmarket crash the killing was devastating.
Sir James had simple ethics: you are required to be a fair and honest trader.
"You spend most of your waking hours in business. If you can't feel satisfied and good about what you are doing, you are wasting the better part of your life."
Sir James is survived by his wife Vaughan, Lady Fletcher, whom he married in 1942, and his other two sons, Angus and Hugh.
His funeral will be at 11am on Tuesday, at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell, Auckland.
- NZPA
