Mega rich are home up north

Michael Hill

The king of bling is among the Northland rich-listers, along with a Russian steel magnate, an American financier, a family that made piles out of sand and the man who built red sheds across New Zealand and Australia.

Now a resident - and golf resort owner - of Arrowtown, Michael Hill, who was born and built his jewellery empire in Whangarei, is nestled comfortably in the 2015 National Business Review rich list with $300 million. That's $10 million less loaded than he was last year.

Mr Hill is the only rich-lister associated with Northland whose stated wealth has dropped since the 2014 list.

Russian industrialist Alexander Abramov tops the list of Northland's filthy rich with $5.6 billion, up $1.1 billion from last year. Mr Abramov is the owner of a $50 million luxury private coastal resort that was nearly five years in the building at Helena Bay, between Whangarei and Bay of Islands.

New York Wall St-based Sir Julian Robertson made his $4.4 billion (up from $3 billion) in hedge funds, and went on to increase his wealth by building three golf resorts in New Zealand, one of them Kauri Cliffs - on a former sheep farm - near Matauri Bay in Northland.

Sir Julian and his wife Josie lived in New Zealand on and off since first visiting in the late 1970s. In 2009, the Robertsons gifted 15 paintings worth $115 million to Auckland Art Gallery.

The fortune of the Drinkrow family, worth $250 million this year (up from $240 million in 2014), was literally built on sand; a Kaipara Harbour sand dredging business being the beginning of an earthmoving and contracting empire.

Farmer Greg Inger took small-time trader Stephen Tindall's The Warehouse from trestle tables in short term shops to megastores. Inger, whose Northland connection comes through owning several farms and forestry at Tapora, near Wellsford, grew his money from $130 million last year to $135 million this year.

The only woman on the Northland list is Wildfire social media queen Victoria Ransom, who lived in rural Northland for a short time as a child. Now US-based, her fortune went up $15 million in the past year, to $315 million.

Sitting on a cool $740 million (up from $720 million), US resident and property developer, Kaitaia born and educated Peter Cooper, made most of his stash from doing up the historic Britomart precinct in Auckland. He has also developed luxury properties in the Bay of Islands - the region is the local link for several others on the Northland rich list, whose ties are limited to owning baches there.