KEY POINTS:
Team New Zealand would have had some extra Aussie support this morning - from an ASX-listed marine business keen to buy more waterfront assets around Auckland.
Murray Boyte, chief executive of Ariadne Australia, was in Auckland on Friday with company representatives who were attending the city's announcement of new plans for the waterfront.
Ariadne has a major investment in the Viaduct Basin.
Last month, the company said it had bought the Orams Marine Village, paying $43 million, and Boyte said the company was looking at other marine-related purchases here.
"Winning the America's Cup would increase the momentum of all the development of waterfront tenancies," he said before this morning's race.
Boyte, born in Wellington, has been with Ariadne for the past 4 1/2 years, but this is his second term with the company chaired by fellow New Zealander Gary Weiss, who is also a director of Guinness Peat Group.
Boyte was also chief executive of Ariadne during its most turbulent phase, from 1990 to 1994, when it was attempting to revive itself from a corporate grave. In the late 1980s, Ariadne posted a A$640 million loss - said at the time to be the largest collapse in Australian corporate history.
But Boyte said the company had turned around its fortunes many years ago. "Ariadne is arguably the most successful corporate reconstruction in Australian history.
"It paid back every cent of A$1.4 billion it owed to creditors and banks and survived to get to where it is today, with a strong shareholder base," he said, largely because it had a large asset base which was sold.
Weiss said he was also proud to have resurrected a company that was once in the top 20 list in Australia. "It rapidly became one of the smallest and indeed at one point held the dubious distinction of reporting the largest corporate loss in Australian history, subsequently superseded by other more notable failures," Weiss said.
He and Sir Ron Brierley joined the board on November 28, 1989 when Brierley Investments took a stake in Ariadne. Weiss said he worked with the banks to revive the company.
Weiss and Boyte said they were proud of the Ariadne name and did not ditch it because it had such a long history.
"I was often asked by shareholders why I didn't change the name, but to some of us involved in the resurrection, we wear the name as a badge of pride because all of us are very pleased at being able to resurrect the company.
"At its peak it had just under 50,000 shareholders, of whom 35,000-plus were New Zealanders, so Murray and I and others invested a huge amount of time to keep the company going and we're proud to keep it as an increasingly viable public company.
"If you change the name, what do you change it to? Queensland Property or something like that?
"Everyone would have said that's the old Ariadne anyway, so I've never spent too much time on the topic of changing the name," Weiss said.
A book had been written about the rise and downfall of Ariadne "but it hasn't been turned into a movie or a stage play yet".
Ariadne had "a colourful past but a far more sedate future", Weiss said.
Boyte said out of its 4500 shareholders, 1500 were New Zealanders.
The share price had risen from A18c when he joined the company 4 1/2 years ago to A72c cents on Friday.
Weiss, who works in Sydney, holds 38 per cent of Ariadne.
BACK FROM GRAVE
* Ariadne is named after a mythical Greek heroine
* Headquarters in Brisbane
* Listed on ASX in October, 1982
* Has A$160 million market capitalisation
* Marine, parking, investment and property interests
* Keen to increase its marine holdings in New Zealand.
