Super rich buying remote boltholes with private airstrips

Hedge fund managers are preparing getaways by buying remote airstrips and farms

http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/jan/23/nervous-super-rich-planning-escapes-davos-2015

With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.

Johnson, who heads the Institute of New Economic Thinking and was previously managing director at Soros, said societies can tolerate income inequality if the income floor is high enough. But with an existing system encouraging chief executives to take decisions solely on their profitability, even in the richest countries inequality is increasing.

Johnson added: “People need to know there are possibilities for their children – that they will have the same opportunity as anyone else. There is a wicked feedback loop. Politicians who get more money tend to use it to get more even money.”

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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/panicked-super-rich-buying-boltholes-5044084

His comments were backed up by Stewart Wallis, executive director of the New Economics Foundation, who when asked about the comments told CNBC Africa: “Getaway cars the airstrips in New Zealand and all that sort of thing, so basically a way to get off.  If they can get off, onto another planet, some of them would.”

He added: “I think the rich are worried and they should be worried. I mean inequality, why does it matter?

“Most people have heard the Oxfam statistics that now we’ve got 80, the 80 richest people in the world, having more wealth that the bottom three-point-five billion, and very soon we’ll get a situation where that one percent, one percent of the richest people have more wealth than everybody else, the 99.”

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SECRET BOLTHOLES IN NEW ZEALAND

If billionaires are trying to hide out in New Zealand, they’re not going unnoticed. These are some of them:

- Russian steel billionaire Alexander Abramov is building a lavish $50 million retreat at Helena Bay in Northland, on the road to Russell. It comes with boat ramps and helicopter pads.

- US film director James Cameron says he is fleeing Hollywood and has bought a decent chunk of Wairarapa ahead of taking out New Zealand citizenship.

- Canadian singer Shania Twain put her heart and soul into $21.5 million Motatapu Station near Queenstown – but it turned out her husband Mutt Lange was having an affair with her secretary and Twain sold the bolthole.

- Another Russian billionaire, Mikhail Khimich, lives here and owns Waiwera Water, north of Auckland. His ambitious expansion plans have yet to materialise into anything extravagant other than his big yacht Thalia.

- Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll is spending five months here in a very large campervan. The man behind the fashion labels Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors can just drive away if he needs to.

- Seattle-based editing software pioneer Paul Brainerd is planning to develop the Glenorchy Holiday Park as a model for environmental sustainability and has opened a general store at the “top of the lake”.

- If the term bolthole ever applied in New Zealand, it was in the 1990s when Tommy Suharto, son of Indonesia’s then-president, owned Lilybank in the South Island’s Mackenzie Basin. He used to fly rich friends in for hunting. After the president lost power, the farm was sold.

- Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, better known as the Sultan of Brunei, owned at least 11 properties in Auckland, including a number in Herne Bay, but as he never visited here they may not qualify as boltholes. He still owns the BNZ centre at 125 Queen St.

- And then there is the new mystery billionaire, vodka king Yuri Shefler. His huge frigate-sized superyacht Serene sailed out of Auckland this morning, heading for the Milford Sound – that would make a great bolthole.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/65486615/nz-farms-eyed-as-boltholes-for-worlds-super-rich