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The reclusive Sovereign Asset Management owners Richard and Christopher Chandler have become New Zealand's richest individuals, the country¡¯s National Business Review (NBR) weekly reported Friday. Their tax-haven based fund walked away with nearly W1 trillion (about US$1 billion) in marginal profits from its short-lived investment in Korean refinery SK Corp.
The Chandler brothers, who are the president and CEO of the company, did not even make the magazine's rankings last year.
NBR, which ranks New Zealand's richest every year, estimates the two brothers are worth about $2.7 billion in investment assets, adding it had been unable to estimate their total wealth.
Their assets include not only their recently-sold 14.8 percent stake in SK but also shares in Russia's Gazprom and Japan's UFJ Holdings. The brothers, who shun the media spotlight, made the NBR list for the first time after their recent dealings in Korea came to light. Local media said they overtook the previous No. 1, the Todd family estimated to be wotrh $2.3 billion.
Sovereign provoked outrage in Korea when it walked away from two and a half years of a management dispute with SK having paid only W10.3 billion in taxes on its W935.9 billion total earnings, ostensibly because the fund has no place of business here.
Little is known about the brothers. At the height of the conflict between SK and Sovereign last March, the Financial Times reported the two preferred to veil themselves in secrecy even as their fund insisted on transparency in corporate management.
Prof. Jang Ha-sung of Korea University, who met Richard Chandler in Monaco in 2003, said, "I've met thousands of investors, but it¡¯s impossible to know the true character of Sovereign."
According to international financial sources and press reports, the Chandler brothers were born in New Zealand and inherited their father's store in the town of Hamilton on the North Island, turning it into a clothes and daily commodities distributor. They sold the business in the 1980s and invested in Hong Kong real estate, and spent the last 20 years accumulating billions of dollars in assets through investment in Hong Kong, Brazil, Russia and Japan.
In the 1990s, they turned their attention to emerging markets, buying up undervalued stock en masse and selling it when prices rose.
Both are chartered accountants, and Richard Chandler wrote his business school thesis on corporate governance. The two live in the south of France, and their parents reportedly in Monaco.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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