About Ron Brierley
Ronald Alfred Brierley (born 2 August 1937) is a New Zealand investor and corporate raider, chairman and director of a number of companies in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. He founded R.A. Brierley Investments Ltd (BIL; renamed GuocoLeisure from October 2007) in March 1961 with no capital. By 1984 BIL was the largest company in New Zealand by market capitalization, and in 1987 had 160,000 shareholders, with a stake in over 300 companies, including Paris department store Galleries Lafayette and Air New Zealand. In April 2021, Brierley pleaded guilty to three counts of possessing child abuse material and resigned his 1988 knighthood after the government had initiated the process of having it removed. He followed this with an investment analysis newsletter "Stocks and Shares" which he founded in 1956 at age 19. He launched an unsuccessful US$1 billion hostile takeover of American building materials manufacturer CalMat Company in 1988.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.