Graeme Hart Net Worth
Graeme Richard Hart is a self-made businessman born in 1955 in Auckland, New Zealand. He is known as a leveraged buyout private equity investor and the richest person in his land of birth.
Have you ever wondered how rich Graeme Hart is? According to sources, it has been estimated that Graeme Hart’s overall net worth is $9 billion. Hart has acquired his wealth mostly by buying companies with a steady cash flow which were performing below expectations and turned them around by restructuring and investing. Since he is still an active LBO, his net worth continues to grow.
Graeme Hart Net Worth $9 Million
Graeme started his business career in a humble way. After leaving Mount Roskill Grammar school when he was 16, he worked as a truck driver and a panel beater. However, in 1987 he graduated with a Masters Degree in business administration from the University of Otago. In his thesis he wrote about the strategy which relies on using well performing companies’ cash flow to fund the debt of the ones in bankruptcy, and increase the equity values of the initial investors, in other words leveraged buyouts. His first successful venture was the purchase of the Government Printing Office in 1990, for an amount which was smaller than its capital value. During the following years, Hart continued making lucrative deals and investments, increasing his wealth day by day. In 2006, he bought Carter Holt Harvey and since then focused on the gain from paper packaging sector.
Hart’s biggest purchase to date was in 2008, when he bought Alcoa’s Packaging & Consumer group for $2.7 billion, and later renamed it to Reynolds Packaging Group. Since then, Hart has cut more than 20% of the workforce within the company, mostly by shutting down plants. This major restructuring effort resulted in significant savings and profit gain fr the company, eventually rewarding Graeme with a high return for his initial investment only a year later.
Contrary to most other LBO’s, Hart prefers keeping equity of the business for himself, not allowing team members to get any share of it. In this way, he ensures that both the risk and the important rewards of investments remain with him. However, Graeme doesn’t directly manage business and is mostly focused on investments that deal with re-capitalization of the companies. Another indicator of this billionaire businessman’s competence and success is the Forbes edition of June 2015, which listed Graeme Hart as the 180th richest person in the world.
When it comes to his private life, Graem is married to Robyn and they have two children. He prefers to keep his life as private as possible and out of reach of general media. However, he has a fine taste in luxurious things, and a nice collection of them; in January 2006, he bought a luxury motor yacht, and has various residences around the world, one of them in Ulstein, Norway. Hart also bought a Glendowie, New Zealand home for $2 million and, after years of big renovations, increased its value to more than $30 million. Apart from this, he owns a beach house on Waiheke Island and a $16 million Aspen estate.
