KEY POINTS:
Greg Muir's dramatic walkout from the board of energy company Vector with fellow directors Tony Gibbs and John Goulter late last year showed his steely side.
The executive chairman of children's clothing retailer Pumpkin Patch has become the golden boy of the New Zealand stock market with a
reputation for brisk efficiency.
Nobody was surprised to learn Gibbs and Goulter had clashed with chairman Michael Stiassny and left in high dudgeon, attacking his leadership of the Vector board.
Both are high-profile players in the New Zealand corporate world and used to its numerous boardroom battles. They would have been expected to balk at Stiassny's style and the messy relationship with the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust.
Muir is regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a more low-key corporate warrior. While business-like as he leads an aggressive expansion of Pumpkin Patch, he comes across as careful and considered, someone who would exhaust all the options before taking such a radical step.
But Muir did not need to be talked into the walkout. "We clearly had concerns with Michael staying on as leader and management's ability to carry on effectively in the current environment," he says.
"I was probably keen to move earlier but as a body Tony, John and I had the advice and decided we should attempt to resolve the issues internally."
One business leader who asked not to be named said it was wrong to mistake Muir's thoughtful demeanour for conservative thinking or cautiousness.
"Greg flies helicopters in his spare time. He fronts up all the time as the chairman of [Auckland Super 14 rugby franchise] the Blues, which can't always be easy," he said.
"He is an astute thinker who understands business. To be honest, I'm a fan," said the business leader.
Muir made his name as a former chief executive of The Warehouse Group and is a director at finance company Hanover Group.
Before that he worked in the retail side of Lion Nathan and in Australia at transport group TNT.
In November he was named Deloitte Management Magazine business executive of 2006 for his Pumpkin Patch role.
Muir was hired in February 2004 for the company's float that June. He plays a key role in promoting the firm to fund managers here and in Europe and the US. Since he joined, Pumpkin Patch has expanded its Australian base, resumed a somewhat difficult drive into the UK and increased the push into the US market.
This year Pumpkin Patch plans to open 30 new stores, including 10 each in the UK and US, and expand its wholesale operation - selling Pumpkin Patch products to other retailers - in Europe, Asia, and the US.
Muir heads the wholesale operation and says he is happy in a role that sees him with one foot in the boardroom and one in the day-to-day business.
Managing director Michael Prendergast focuses on the retail end. By all accounts the two men get on. Both are 48 and have complementary skills.
Muir praises Prendergast and stresses that the achievements of Pumpkin Patch predate his own arrival: "Maurice and I get on very well and also have a very good understanding of who does what. We do not step on one another's toes.
"He has been the real driver behind this business and is incredibly generous in terms of the profile.
"Maurice is - shy is not the right term - but he has never had the need to push himself forward as a spokesman for the company."
When Pumpkin Patch floated some Australasian fund managers and brokers gave a mixed reception to the stock. One or two were sceptical and were more upbeat about another float - for Feltex.
Was Muir frustrated by the reaction?
"Not frustrated, no. We were surprised that some parts of the market took so long to understand us while some parts got it straight away.
"We have a number of US and Asian investors who have invested in us - the Fidelity Fund out of the US, Wasatch Capital and Lloyd George out of Hong Kong.
"When we meet US fund managers they seem to understand growth stories better some of the fund managers in Australia.
"Even now we have relatively low representation on our share register from Australian growth funds."
One of Muir's fans made the point that he had headed The Warehouse Group during its ill-fated expansion into the Australian market. While he cannot be held responsible for the scale of that loss, he would have learned some valuable lessons about what not to do in an overseas rollout.
But he has a special affinity with retail business.
"I like the immediacy of retail. If you are doing something to stimulate the market you get to find out straight away what exactly is happening."
That said, when things go wrong in retail they can also go wrong quickly.
Pumpkin Patch is not competing against the global giants such as Wal-Mart, but if it has an Achilles heel it would appear to be that it is operating in the notoriously fickle fashion sector - albeit children's fashion.
Muir says: "There are a number of things that act against that. First, that we now have 15 years of being able to pick two seasons of clothing lines that work. We have shown that what sells well in New Zealand sells well in the United States, the UK and the Middle East."
Muir is upbeat about prospects in the US market but there have been some notable slides, most recently with Gap, which has a children's clothes line, Gap Kids.
"It would be presumptuous of us to to diagnose Gap too much because it is still enormously successful. It is just that it is not growing so fast.
"If there is a lesson for us it is that you can oversaturate a market with stores and start cannibalising one another and that is something we will keep in mind in the Australian market."
Maurice Prendergast describes Pumpkin Patch's expansion as being careful risk taking and its growth strategy takes it beyond other New Zealand companies.
Michael Hill Jeweller is the other comparison of a retail stock expanding overseas, although it is based in Queensland. The other expansive Kiwi retailer is the privately owned outdoor firm Kathmandu, founded by Jan Cameron.
She sold a 51 per cent stake to investment bank Goldman Sachs JBWere, through its Hauraki Private Equity No.2 Fund and buyout firm Quadrant Private Equity.
Indeed, private equity is on the march around the world, especially in the retail sector. Could Pumpkin Patch become trampled underfoot?
"You cannot rule out that as we get bigger we start to appear on more people's radar screens.
"On the other hand, we trade on a high multiple of share price over earnings (28 with the current share price at $4.74), which is high for New Zealand, though not uncommon in the United States."
Muir is sceptical about the reputation that has grown up around private equity companies as miracle workers.
"If a group of private equity guys comes in and recognises value and makes what are often fundamental and basic adjustments to a business, then you have to say that the companies were being under-managed. It's not as though these guys have a magic bottle of water.
"Have the companies private equities are targeting been running at a sufficient pace or have they been dawdling? Sooner or later there will be significant tears because there is just so much capital out there, be it equity or debt.
"You will start to see some of these private equity deals that are too highly leveraged will start to fail and that will calm this whole market. It will take one or two really big failures to change that."
At 48 Muir is just stepping up to the top rung of New Zealand company directors. And yet his abiding interest in retail suggests he has never strayed too far from home, starting his working life with a part-time job in his father's store, Muir Appliances, in the Waikato town of Matamata.
Greg Muir
Born for retail:
* As a teenager he worked part-time at his father's appliance store in Matamata.
* One of his great pleasures is flying helicopters.
* Former chief executive of The Warehouse Group.
* Chairman of the rugby Super 14 franchise the Auckland Blues.
* Executive chairman of Pumpkin Patch which pushed ahead with new stores in New Zealand, Australia, UK and the US.
* Director at finance company Hanover Group.
* Pumpkin Patch's net profit after tax to July 31 last year was $28.5 million.
* Pumpkin Patch share price yesterday was $4.70, nearly four times the $1.25 when the company floated in June 2004.
