Justin Lynch - Low-flying master of the mall game

Justin Lynch runs New Zealand's biggest owner of shopping centres. Photo / Richard Robinson

As a boy, Justin Lynch got a hands-on education in the retail sector. After dinner, he and his 11 other family members would sit around the dining table, packaging goods to sell in shops.

Lynch, one of five brothers and five sisters, grew up in a "great big rambling house" in Blakehurst, Sydney.

His father, Peter, was a successful pharmacist and pharmaceutical manufacturer, so lots of painkillers, fluoride tablets and anti-nausea medication had to be packaged up in the evenings, ready for the next day's brisk retail trade.

"Funny, I haven't thought about that for years," said Lynch in a meeting room at mall operator Westfield's unspectacular national offices in Newmarket.

"We bagged pills, stapled them into packets and folded the packages. Dad was instrumental in getting fluoride added to the Sydney water supply - at the expense of his own business because he made and sold fluoride tablets. But he wanted it added to the water because it was the right thing to do. He would be embarrassed by my talking about it. It was one of his achievements."

Lynch is Westfield NZ's deputy director, second to director John Widdup, who has returned to Australia. Lynch has effectively been running Westfield for months and says he is happy he has not been given the top title.

High-profile Widdup was prominent here, appearing in society pages and making a string of announcements. Lynch flies much lower on the business radar.

"Westfield may be the biggest ratepayer in Newmarket but the senior management team has a very, very low profile," said Cameron Brewer, Newmarket Business Association's general manager.

"Having said that, Westfield's local reputation has improved 100-fold over the past five years, after they dropped plans for the mega-mall at the bottom of Remuera Rd. I think John and Justin have done an excellent job restoring and building Westfield's reputation in the community."

Since Widdup's return to Sydney, Westfield's media profile has shrunk but Lynch says the business is where it needs to be - although he does agree he has a somewhat reserved style.

Lynch runs a business which owns a portfolio of probably the country's best malls. Not only does Westfield dominate its retail catchments, but it has enormous expansion capacity on many sites. Work started at the new $210 million Albany mall only a few months ago, but Lynch's team is already planning a big expansion, well before opening this year.