Tindall calls up the reserves

Stephen Tindall

Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall's charitable foundation looks likely to use its reserves to ramp up support for training schemes for the unemployed.

His Tindall Foundation, whose income of about $9.5 million a year comes from dividends from a 23 per cent stake in The Warehouse, helped to fund the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs and supports other small-scale training schemes, such as trade training at Northland College in Kaitaia.

But Mr Tindall surprised delegates at the Government's Jobs Summit on Friday when he announced a $1 million boost to funding for "bottom-up" training during a report-back from his working group to the full summit.

Council of Trade Unions economist Peter Conway, who chaired a sub-group in the same working group, said the first he heard of the initiative was when Mr Tindall unveiled it in the final plenary.

Tindall Foundation manager Trevor Gray did not know of it until the Herald rang yesterday. He checked with Mr Tindall, who was attending his mother's 80th birthday party, and said later that Mr Tindall had cleared it with the foundation's other three trustees - his wife, Margaret Tindall, family friend Jenny Casey and former Mainzeal chief executive Peter Menzies.

Mr Gray will meet Mr Tindall today to hear more about the idea.

"I think it's additional to our existing budget," he said. "We always have a little bit of reserves and I guess he's thinking it will come from there."

He said the foundation preferred to be a "catalyst" for new projects rather than giving ongoing funding, and had stopped supporting the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs and other employment projects during the recent years of low unemployment.

"Because of the period of full employment, training hasn't been one of our major priorities. In the current situation things are up for review."

Mr Tindall was ranked New Zealand's 21st-richest person in the National Business Review's rich list, with personal wealth of $436 million last July. Shares in The Warehouse have held up better than most since then, slipping only 15 per cent from $3.95 to $3.35.