Terry Serepisos. Photo / Supplied
"It doesn't matter how I feel," Terry Serepisos told a press conference to announce he had relinquished ownership of football team the Wellington Phoenix. "I know I started it ... I know I gave everybody in this room joy. That can never be taken away."
Three days later, last Monday, a bankruptcy court called time on his long, international search for money to stave off the collapse of the House of Serepisos. During that search he appears to have lost a large sum in "fees" to a dubious Bahrain-based lender and properties in his mother's name have been mortgaged.
The self-made multimillionaire has debts of more than $200 million, while doubts have been expressed about the $232 million estimate he has put on his commercial and retail properties. There are patterns in his rise to fortune and his Icarus-like fall. Like many, he amassed a fortune on the back of a sustained rise in property prices and got into difficulty when the world economy caught a cold.
Risks and rewards are high. One of Serepisos' sports cars, a Lamborghini Diablo Roadster, was listed as owned by former high-flying Auckland developer Andrew Krukziener, who declared himself bankrupt last year with debts of $47 million.
Both leave legacies of a kind. Krukziener built the distinctive Metropolis building, while Serepisos can take credit for establishing a professional football team in New Zealand.
Serepisos is not shy to take a bow. "They say I'm the saviour of football in this country. Well, they're right," he said last year, shortly before news of financial problems broke.
He has suggested he has ploughed close to $10 million into the club since buying it in 2007. Indications are there are football bills yet unpaid, along with money owed to financiers, tradespeople and staff at his company, Century City.
Phoenix and All Whites coach Ricki Herbert is reportedly owed about $100,000 in salary (a figure Serepisos has disputed). Herbert declined to comment for this article but Brian Turner, who played beside Herbert in the 1982 World Cup and was his assistant coach when the All Whites wrote a little history by going undefeated in last year's tournament, told the Herald the sport is indebted to Serepisos, who stepped in when the Auckland-based New Zealand Knights fell over.
"He was a huge source of support and inspiration for the game. Had it not been for Terry and his support of the Phoenix, there is probably every chance we wouldn't have experienced what we did in the 2010 World Cup. For me, he's been a breath of fresh air for the game."
Turner, who spent several months assisting Herbert with the Phoenix soon after Serepisos bought the club in 2007, says he found him to be generous. "He's a good guy, he is outward going, he likes to party and to have a drink.
"The day New Zealand qualified for the World Cup we went to a bar in Wellington. Terry came in and hired the bar out and paid the bill and it would have come to quite some thousands. That's the man. It's just sad the way it has ended ... because there was no one else waiting in the wings to bail [New Zealand professional football] out."
According to a source who worked closely with Serepisos, there is another side to the man. "He could at times be really generous and kind and quite charming and at other times be a complete arsehole," the source says. He could be quite delusional and verbally abusive.
Stress may have been part of that, the insider, who did not want to be named, acknowledges, but it was hard to tell as he kept business details close to his chest and continued to do so as his things unravelled.
In his desperation, hope overwhelmed caution. "He's been absolutely done but he couldn't see it," the insider says in regard to the ill-fated Bahrainian episode. "That was one of the most disappointing things. It was a case of if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ...
"Everyone could see it except for him but he wouldn't take advice. In fact he never takes advice - and that's part of his problem."
Serepisos, he says, was driven by a strong desire to be seen to be part of the business elite. "He seeks adulation essentially. He will give the old PR line I did it for football, for Wellington, for the kids. No, he did it because he wanted to stoke his ego. Fundamentally what he craves and what drives him is a need to feel accepted, to feel part of the elite.
"His contribution to football and to Wellington is well-documented and he deserves congratulations but we shouldn't mistake the real driving force here."
Serepisos did not return a request to be interviewed for this story. He may feel he has become a victim of the tall poppy syndrome, the supposed Kiwi tendency to laud the climb and applaud the fall.
"It's a shame," he told the Sunday Star-Times in 2009. "In countries like Italy or France or Greece, when you succeed they say 'well done, you're doing well'. In New Zealand, you have the great knocking machine."
Serepisos was always going to stand out. He enjoyed conspicuous success, embracing the Donald Trump role on The Apprentice New Zealand and ticking off the publishers of The NBR Rich List for doing him a disservice with their estimate of a $100 million fortune.
Serepisos had his lawyer write a letter: "Terry has provided me with a signed schedule, prepared by his financial brokers , listing his properties, their most current values and the existing debt on each ... on that basis I can confirm that the schedule showed a net worth in excess of $140 million."
Private money such as the Todd family would cringe but Serepisos is more in the style of fellow sports club owner Eric Watson (the Warriors), at whose 50th birthday bash in Istanbul in 2009 Serepisos was a guest.
Serepisos had an eye for bling from a young age. Born Eleftarious Serepisos in Greece, his father, Demetri, a housepainter, and mother, Alliki, brought the family to Wellington when Serepisos was 2. He has nominated a red chopper bicycle bought for him by his father as his standout childhood memory.
Not academically inclined, his path was set when, as a teenager travelling in a campervan on his European OE, he discovered Italian fashion. He opened Trellini, a men's fashion store selling the latest Italian designs, which soon grew to six outlets around Wellington.
Next came the nightlife. He sold the stores to buy the Ecstasy Plus bar in the capital's party strip, Courteney Place, in the early 1990s.
His move into property came when he noticed a neighbouring derelict building owned by Sir Ron Brierley. He bought cheap, converted the building into apartments and retail and made a tidy profit. That began his ride on a long-running property wave. At the time of bankruptcy his portfolio included more than six commercial buildings and some 150 residential properties, the bulk of them apartments.
Reputed to order a newly-designed shirt a week and with a preference for Dom Perignon, he became a colourful character on Wellington's social scene. He was a winner of the fashion in the field competition on Wellington Cup day, a race meeting his company Century City later sponsored along with the Wellington Saints basketball team.
Serepisos has attributed the impetus for the Phoenix to the deaths of his father in 2005 and brother Kostas a year later from leukaemia. He was close to both, Kostas being his right-hand man in the property business.
After his brother's death he busied himself with work but told the Dominion-Post in a 2008 interview that he began to realise life was about more than making money. "I decided I wanted to put something back into the community."
While having his hair cut in 2007 he heard a radio report that a bid to secure a franchise for Wellington in the A-league was about to fail for want of the $1.2 million guarantee demanded by Football Australia.
That year the Phoenix was born and the team attracted a record crowd for its match against a side featuring the game's biggest name, David Beckham. Serepisos, a Rongotai College schoolboy rugby winger who later dabbled in club football, was named 2007 Wellington sportsperson of the year.
Though in public he is usually surrounded by people, Serepisos may be quite isolated. Kostas was his closest friend and ally.
He has never married but has a teenage son, Julian, to former model and Telebingo host Ingrid Mole. They split amicably several years ago and she lives near his Roseneath mansion in a home the businessman built for her.
It is unclear how close he is to another brother, Lambros, owner of the now-closed Paleros Restaurant and who appeared in the Wellington District Court last December on charges of breaching home detention and a single charge of possession of cannabis.
The source describes Serepisos as a "street smart" businessman but not in the mould "of a Ron Brierley or a Bob Jones" who have seen through many economic cycles.
"Whether by luck or good management he took advantage of very good timing [but] he didn't have the wherewithal or the fundamental business nous to see things through when times went bad."
Serepisos was among many who didn't see tough times coming, outlaying more than he ever had before buying and developing properties, all of them heavily leveraged. More than $150 million was spent in a short period prior to the beginning of the world financial crisis in 2008. Early that year he said he was unconcerned by predictions of an oversupply of apartments. "When you have quality with high specs, you will be okay."
The court this week denied Serepisos' request for an extra four days' grace to secure a loan from an unnamed merchant bank in Hong Kong.
"He is a bit angry, but that's Terry, he's stubborn," the source says. "His stubbornness is both an [asset] and his downfall.
"He's a fighter and you have to give him his dues for that but I think he wasn't clever enough to know when to let go. He kept punching on."
That drive may yet see him back on top. "It will be difficult but I certainly wouldn't rule out Terry rising from the ashes, phoenix-like."
Terry Serepisos
Born: May 8, 1963, in Greece.
Christened: Eleftarious Serepisos.
Drives: Lamborghini Diablo Roadster.
Drinks: Dom Perignon champagne.
Career highlights: Owning the Wellington Phoenix soccer team, hosting TV's The Apprentice New Zealand.
Lowlight: Being declared bankrupt this week, unable to pay his debts of more than $200 million.
A scene guard is in place, and inquiries continuing, police say.