Adventure ends for GPG's castaway

Tony Gibbs. Photo / Paul Estcourt

On Wednesday Tony Gibbs packed up his Queen St office. It was the end of what he describes as the "great adventure" he embarked on 18 years ago.

He says he never believed it would last so long - or end in such a difficult way.

The well-known and likeable corporate raider was sacked from the board of Guinness Peat Group by long-time friend Sir Ron Brierley after speaking out against plans for a proposed demerger of the company.

Gibbs, who acknowledges things hadn't been going so well for some time, says he felt there was no other choice after an email he sent last Tuesday fell on deaf ears.

"I knew they wouldn't like it. But if I couldn't talk to them and they wouldn't even answer an email - what was I supposed to do?"

The notice of his sacking came via email before a telephone conference which he describes as tinged with emotion but grown-up.

"GPG communication can be sparse," he admits. But at least now he says he feels honest.

"I don't feel angry. I feel I did the right thing and if the consequences of telling the truth are that I got fired. So be it."

It's having principles like that that have kept Gibbs going over the years and won him respect even from those he has gone head to head with.

Investment banker Bill Birnie describes Gibbs as tough and uncompromising when it comes to business.

"The fact he is upfront, straight and honest about it is a very endearing feature in a businessman."

"What makes him a little bit different was that he really did start with nothing and I don't think he has ever forgotten that."

Birnie got to know Gibbs when the pair teamed up to take over apple marketing group Enza.

"It was an interesting situation because we did have different views about what to do with the company."

The moment which he believes defined their friendship came before a meeting of apple growers in Nelson.

Birnie was chairman of Enza at the time but Gibbs informed him before the meeting that he had enough support from the growers to roll him from the position.

"We had a meeting with a lot of rhetoric. It didn't matter who won and who lost. At the end of it we walked out and had a beer. There's very few people you can do that with. We had had our battle and it was behind us and we still remained friends. That was the defining moment in our friendship."

Within a week of the meeting Gibbs had acquired all of Birnie's shares in Enza.

Birnie says he has a lot of respect for Gibbs but also a degree of envy.

"There are things he has taken on that I really would like to have taken on. There is a bit of envy there in the transactions and deals he has pulled off."

Like others he was surprised to see Gibbs dumped from the board of GPG.

"He is such a big component of the company. He's the person that most New Zealanders see as Mr GPG - not Gary Weiss not Sir Ron Brierley.

"I don't know what his future will look like but whatever he does will be 100 per cent."

Gibbs, who first met Brierley in 1980 when the pair both tried to buy into retailer George Courts, is no stranger to doing battle to get what he wants done.

But he says he doesn't purposely look for fights.

"I don't go looking for fights but my job - as I saw it - was to make money for GPG shareholders."

Gibbs built his reputation working for Brierley in the 1980s. Before he knew it Brierley had got him on to a range of boards where he served as an operations director.

"The 80s was a very exciting time. I remember turning 40 and an old Brierley fellow said 'welcome to your first pair of long pants'. That was Don McDonald, he was a good mentor."

Then the 1987 stock market crash arrived and Brierley Investments was in chaos.

It was a few years later before Brierley knocked on his door again.

Gibbs was employed by Guinness Peat Group in 1990, two years after it was set up. "There was no formal interview. It just happened.

"At that stage we embarked on a series of adventures."

Gibbs says he enjoyed the strategic thinking and the analytical work of the job.

"We made a lot of money and GPG grew dramatically. We had £40 million when we started that has grown to $1.8 billion in the last 18 to 20 years."

But it was not all a walk in the park. A battle to buy a stake in Tenon - the former Fletcher Forests business - hit a major bump when he tried to buy out majority owner Rubicon.

GPG took Rubicon shareholder and US firm the Perry Group to court.

Luke Moriarty, who is still chief executive of Rubicon, eight years on from the stoush won't talk about what went on and says it's history now.

"Business conflict is nothing new for Tony. However this situation appears to be quite different, from the outside, because it is with his own team. It really is quite an extraordinary dynamic."

GPG has certainly done things differently to other companies.

Gibbs says many shareholders might have thought he worked with an army of GPG people to get everything done.

"But all this time it has only ever been me and a personal assistant."

Brierley would come back for an annual pilgrimage to his house in Wellington but Gibbs can't remember a time when his boss ever stepped into his Auckland office.

"Ron is a very unconventional person and I must say I am immensely fond of him. But he does frustrate me. Ron's greatest attribute is he lets you get on with things. He knows what you are doing and likes a report every now and then but he doesn't check up on you every five minutes."

Through working with GPG he also got to know Australian-based director Gary Weiss. "We got quite close."

One of the big acquisitions the pair pulled off was Tower. Before it demutualised the company was worth around $3 per share but then got into trouble and its share price plummeted by more than 60 per cent. GPG snapped it up and still owns around 30 per cent today.

Tower was also one of the first times Gibbs came in contact with veteran shareholders campaigner Bruce Sheppard.

"The then chairman thought Gibbs was going to storm the bastille and cut throats. I said [to Gibbs] you need to be on there so I had a chat to [chairman Colin] Beyer."

But it hasn't been all plain sailing between the pair. It didn't take long before Sheppard wasn't happy with what Tower was doing.

"He pissed me off by trying to rape and pillage Tower with a discounted rights issue by GPG."

Sheppard says Gibbs has never been afraid to stand up for his principles. "He's a man who cares about his country and his people. He cares about his reputation and shareholders and applies all of that with bloody good judgment."

Sheppard said Gibbs' sacking from GPG would be a huge loss to the company and to chairman Sir Ron Brierley. "He needs his head read," he said of Brierley.

Gibbs admits things had not been going too well for a while between directors, particularly himself and Australian director Gary Weiss.

"I think we made a series of bad decisions. I think we got to the point where it wasn't going to work and we all acknowledged that," Gibbs said of the GPG structure.

Many point to the acquisition of Coats in 2003 as being one of those poor decisions and its performance has weighed on the company.

"When we bought it we hadn't done enough homework. What we thought we were buying was not what we got."

Since then GPG has spent years and millions of dollars on stabilising Coats.

"Coats has been a huge consumer of GPG time. There has been a lot of critics of us but it has weathered the GFC remarkably well." Coats was going to be floated in 2007 but the markets collapsed in the credit crisis.

"The markets changed and you couldn't float anything," Gibbs said.

After that happened the board began to look at other ways to split up the business. One of those Gibbs admits to pushing was splitting off the New Zealand business - but the board decided against that.

"After that many propositions on how we might separate and they were all knocked out everything went quiet. The relationship between Gary and I deteriorated and [UK-based executive director] Blake [Nixon] with Gary. All of a sudden before we knew it there was a proposal to split off Australia. We weren't very happy about it. But we got to a position where it was structured in a way that Blake and I thought we could live with it. All the others wanted to do it."

But after Weiss made his visit to New Zealand soon after announcing the proposal Gibbs said he knew it wasn't going to work.

Gibbs won't talk about what he thinks the board should do now, he says he has made his thoughts clear.

He is also reluctant to point to exactly what led to the fall-out between him and Weiss.

But he doesn't regret being part of GPG. "I'm proud of my achievement and having been part of it. I am very honoured to have worked with the calibre of people I have worked with."

For now he plans to stay on the board of Tower and Turners and Growers for as long as they still want him. But he will have some more free time now.

On Wednesday he packed up his office on Queen St. He still has an apartment in Auckland he can work from.

It's his Matakana mandarin farm where his main home is and where he lives with his wife of 40 years Val.

"One thing I am going to do is have a bit of time with Val and go somewhere nice."

Of course he will miss the $1.5 million salary. "I will miss a lot of things. But one thing I have learned in my life is you have got to move on. And I have moved on in my head - well I'm trying to."

ANTHONY GIBBS
* Age: 62.
* Born in Romford, England, he moved to New Zealand as a 4-year-old.
* Grew up in Titirangi, in West Auckland.
* Went to Kelston Boys High School.
* At age 15 he left home to see the world
* His adventures included: working his way around the Arctic Circle, peeling potatoes on ships, riding a horse for a living in Israel, chipping bricks in Denmark and living in a bombed out castle in Germany.
* Returned to New Zealand in the 1970s
* Sold his first business in 1978 at age 30 and began investing in the stock market
* Joined Guinness Peat Group in 1992, two years after it was set up.
* Received a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2009
* Married to Val.