KEY POINTS:
Tainui Group Holding's assets now exceed $415 million, confirming it as a major business player.
Five years after restructuring its underperforming tribal business the commercial arm has grown the asset base by a remarkable 127 per cent.
This morning TGH reported for the 2006/2007 year it now had assets worth $378 million but with the buy out of its joint venture partner at the The Base retail complex in Hamilton, which takes effect today, that figure rises to $415 million.
Last year the tribe's assets were worth $312 million.
The net profit at $64.3 million was slightly down on last year's $69 million mark but the dividend back to the tribe's shareholder, Waikato's Raupatu Lands Trust, was practically the same at $10.5 million.
Board chairman John Spencer said without TGH, many of projects the company is developing in Hamilton such as The Base, Ibis Hotel, and residential subdivisions could not have happened.
He said TGH was spearheading a change in attitudes that Maori were not competent managers of Treaty of Waitangi settlement money.
"I'm a strong believer that the treaty process can be win-win. This is how it should be.
We talk to iwi, they're all headed down a similar path (to ours)."
"What this means is that we now have the financial base, the expertise and the working relationships to take the company to the next level. We are no longer an emerging company."
TGH's healthy balance sheet has also allowed it a $30 million debt facility with Westpac which will allow it to move quicker in the market place.
The company holds 80 per cent of its assets in property and that will remain the focus.
Chief executive Mike Pohio said while the company had some "speed wobbles" in the past, the scale of the projects it now considered were in the tens of million of dollars not in the hundreds of thousands - which was where it was before restructuring.
In the next couple of months he expected to announce a major deal, but was not prepared to say what that was.
