Shelley Bridgeman: Six lessons from the Rich List

As written in the Rich List's introduction, it's about "sharing important lessons". Photo / Getty

Every year the National Business Review (NBR) ranks NZ's highest net worth individuals and publishes its findings. The fact that this publication has been unofficially dubbed "a kidnapper's handbook" does not deter the NBR from its annual mission.

The NBR Rich List 2016 is black and gold, and surprisingly robust. It may look really good on my brand new, black, glossy, round, pedestal side table but it's no mere accessory. I have also skim read many of its 224 pages so you don't have to.

Most of the business information bored me witless; there were acquisitions, initial public offerings, investment vehicles, property portfolios, partnerships, start ups, transactions and ventures. But what grabbed my attention were some of the underlying messages in these tales of Kiwi-style wealth accumulation.

As written in the Rich List's introduction, it's about "sharing important lessons". Here are six key lessons I discovered within its pages:

1. Most rich listers are caucasian

If you flick through the Rich List and blink at the wrong time you will miss the photographs of Danny Chan ($180 million), John and Michael Chow ($150 million) and the Jhunjhnuwala family ($150 million). Despite claims the Rich List is becoming more diverse, Caucasian people dominate overwhelmingly.

2. 97 per cent of rich listers are men

There are 134 individuals on the Rich List but I counted just four women: Diane Foreman, Annette Presley, Wendy Pye and Victoria Ransom. So 97 per cent of individual Rich Listers are men.

Women clearly need to try harder. What on earth are they doing with their time and energy? Oh, I know. That's right: most of them got married and turned into unpaid cooks, cleaners and babysitters with barely any time to think for themselves let alone build an empire.

3. Women rich listers are trivialised

Female Rich Listers are not given the respect their male counterparts enjoy. While the men are written about in dignified language, the women are treated as if they are lightweights.

Annette Presley ($100 million) was described as "feisty" while Wendy Pye ($105 million) is "fun-loving". Victoria Ransom ($250 million) was described as "footloose and fancy free".

And, weirdly, it was said of Diane Foreman ($190 million) that she "is ice cream queen no longer". Male Rich Listers are treated with far more dignity and less frivolity. No one would even contemplate calling a male Rich Lister feisty, fun-loving, footloose or fancy free.

4. Family fortunes can be misleading

In some cases, clusters of people sharing accumulated family wealth are included in the Rich List. But once you take that estimated wealth and divide it by the number of family members mentioned in the article, often that figure falls well short of the $50-million threshold to appear on the list in the first place. The Titchener family, for example, has an estimated wealth of $125-million.

But the Titchener family consists of the founding couple, their son, daughter and five grandchildren. Once you share the family fortune between the nine of them that's under $14-million per head, which isn't even close to making the grade for an individual.

5. Some rich families squabble

Descendants of Rich Listers have been known to turn on each other in an attempt to ensure they're not shortchanged when the fortune is divvied up. Some members of the Gough family ($365 million) "were locked in a bitter feud for several decades". Evidently, the grandchildren from the founder's first marriage had a bone to pick with the grandchildren from the founder's second marriage.

The fact that the "fight between the two sides was about board control" makes it sound like something out of TVNZ's Filthy Rich. There was tension, too, in the Erceg family ($1.6 billion) which lead to court proceedings and threats to "discuss family matters with the media". Meanwhile, a Green family ($500 million) dispute over Hugh Green's fortune "still plagues the family".

6. Some very rich people get knighted

Five of the top fifteen entries on this year's list are men who have been knighted. They are: Sir Michael Friedlander ($1.5 billion), Sir Michael Fay ($900 million), Sir Douglas Myers ($900 million), Sir Robert Jones ($650 million) and Sir Peter Jackson ($630 million). Lesson six: being extremely rich increases your chances of being knighted. Good to know.