
Perpetual Guardian chief Patrick Gamble about his hard lessons in property investing
He has headed up the estate planning and wealth management firm since 2020.
In that time, he has overseen the high-profile move by owner Andrew Barnes to introduce a four-day working week.
Talking on the Money Talks podcast, he reflects on wealth and investment and what he has learned about it through his own experience.
Gamble studied law at the University of Otago on the assumption that it was a pathway to wealth and got into property investment as soon as he started earning a decent wage.
'As a graduate lawyer, I used that money to buy a couple of investment properties really early on,' Gamble says.
'You sort of buy one, the market goes up, you leverage the difference, then buy a second one.'
The lending rules were a bit looser in those days (the early 2000s), he recalls.
Growing up, his parents didn't have a lot of money.
He recalls his father working 50 hours a week at the freezing works just to break even with the dole and the financial pressure on the family during a strike.
'But they were very entrepreneurial,' he says.
When his mother started working in the 1990s, they invested in student flats.
'They'd leveraged heavily to buy some flats,' he says. 'I had to work every second weekend with Dad on those flats.
'We hated it. Dad was obsessed with cleaning up after all these students. You'd own one in a block of 12, but you'd end up cleaning up after all 12 sets of students.'
But despite that, Gamble followed in their footsteps as a property investor.
'I had no business doing it,' he says. 'I didn't actually know what I was doing. But I left university relatively wealthy on paper, certainly by the standards I had then.'
At that point, he headed off to Ireland, where he had spent a portion of his childhood, to have his OE and work as a lawyer.
'When I came back to New Zealand at 30, I was at zero because those properties were so far underwater,' he says.
'I had worked incredibly hard through my twenties, and I'd been well paid. All the money I'd earned in Ireland, and in Malta and other places, all of it was wiped out.'
Some people do make a lot of money out of property investment, 'but it is a game that burns a lot of people along the way,' he says.
'And those stories aren't talked about much.'
In part, Gamble was caught by timing, being hit by the Global Financial Crisis.
But there were other issues, he admits.
'One of the places I'd bought, a gang moved in, a close-by school shut down. These are the risks.'
It went from being a desirable area for young families to one where the families all left, he says.
Prices went down.
'If you read a book on property investment, this is the first thing they'll tell you. But when you're young, or just a bit naive, you just think property only goes one way,' he says.
'It's definitely not a one-way bet. You can lose money on property, and ... the bank is not your friend when things are not going well.
'When you're borrowing, they're very keen to lend. And then when you fall below an LVR [loan-to-value ratio] threshold, you're dealing with very different people'.
The thing for potential property investors to be aware of is how involved in the property you need to be, he says.
'The mistake that I made, the thing that really burned me, was when I went to Ireland, I basically just left them with a property manager and thought it would all be fine. Rent came in and bills went out.
'But what I didn't realise was all this other stuff happening around the properties that was driving their value down. I wasn't seeing the New Zealand market.'
Property isn't something that you can just put a substantial chunk of life savings into and then just forget about it in the way that you can KiwiSaver or a managed fund, he says.
'You have to actively be a property manager or a landlord. You've got to treat it like a job. And most people don't have the time for that.
'If you are fully committed to it, sure, there are lots of people who still manage to make money. But there are better investments for people who don't have the time.'
These days, it's Gamble's job – leading Perpetual Guardian – to manage family investments and wealth long term, although he doesn't specifically handle the investing side.
Perpetual Guardian's primary role is to look after people's interests when they're no longer able to look after themselves, he says.
'That's our fundamental job as a fiduciary and as a trustee. So if they've passed away and they left things behind them in any sort of difficulty, we can step in.
'But we also help people grow their money throughout their lives. We invest in people. We run a lot of funds. We run financial investments for people outside of our fund group as well.'
Perpetual Guardian made global headlines in 2019 when owner Andrew Barnes decided to launch the four-day working week policy.
'That's still a thing,' Gamble says.
The idea is that you try to streamline your days; you get rid of time-wasting things like long meetings and mucking about on your phone, he says.
'You try and get all your work done in four days that you would've done in five. And then you take the fifth day off. So it's not an idea that you are doing 80% of the work. It's the idea you're doing 100% of the work, you're just doing it in 80% of the time.'
But since Covid and the rise of remote working, the company also offers people the choice of working five days with three in the office and two at home.
'What Covid showed us is, for a lot of people, particularly in office work, you can work from home,' he says.
'You still can be efficient. You can monitor your staff, you can make sure that it doesn't all fall apart.'
In all the big centres, that is increasingly the preferred option, he says.
'You know, if you're in Auckland and you've gotta drive 45 minutes to work, it's just better to have two days not having to do that.
'The focus that we have is trying to allow people to have the flexibility in their job; to still live their lives and not be stuck having to get a babysitter in because they can't leave work and log in two hours later.'
Outside of his own work hours, Gamble has taken on the important role as honorary consul for Ukraine in New Zealand.
His wife is from the east of Ukraine and has been in New Zealand for 17 years, but his brother-in-law has been drafted and is fighting.
'When the war started, it was very personal for us,' he says.
Gamble says he was on the periphery of work his wife was doing, but when the ambassador, based in Canberra, wanted to appoint an honorary consul, he stepped up.
'They wanted a New Zealander because their main focus is trying to create links between their Government and the New Zealand Government, their businesses and New Zealand businesses.'
The goal is to try to maintain media coverage, political coverage, and keep the war in the public consciousness, he says.
'It's not a hard sell. The New Zealand Government – both sides of the House – have been very, very supportive.
'New Zealand has made economic contributions, it's made humanitarian contributions, it has made some military contributions through training,' he says.
'I would obviously advocate that we could be and should be doing more. I think it's very much in our self-interest. I think Ukraine is an absolute horrendous precedent for a country as isolated as New Zealand.'
In New Zealand, it is easy to forget how much we rely on the international rules-based order for absolutely everything in our lives, he says.
'From fuel that runs our trucks to harvest our food, everything in our world relies on the fact that you can ship goods or fly goods into New Zealand unmolested. If we let that rules-based order fracture, New Zealand is in a very difficult position.'
Three years in, the Ukrainian conflict has become a war of attrition, Gamble says.
'That's very much by design from the Russian perspective, because they're much happier taking casualties than the Ukrainians are. There haven't been the wins that they enjoyed in the first few months. Things become static.
'Then at the same time, you've had other conflicts around the world. There is only so much in the attention span.
'So that is part of the work [as consul] – to make sure that the right people, who can influence change and decision making, are still talking about it.
Listen to the full episode to hear more from
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn't about personal finance and isn't about economics – it's just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it's had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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NZ Herald
10 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Housing market recovery delayed despite rising sales volumes
Cotality (formerly known as CoreLogic and one of the foremost authorities on the housing market) recently noted that volumes have been gradually rising for about two years. It points out that the rise in May activity pushed sales levels to 5% above anything we've seen at that point in the year since 2016. On that basis, the slump looks to be behind us, but we haven't seen a recovery on the pricing front. The REINZ house price index (HPI) has fallen for six out of the past seven months. Nationwide prices are unchanged over the past 12 months and still 16.3% below the peak in late 2021. That's not the case everywhere, of course. The South Island has performed much more strongly, with Canterbury, Otago and Southland more buoyant and all within 5% of the peak. The impact of a solid agricultural sector is likely to be part of the reason for that. In contrast, Auckland and Wellington have struggled and are still more than 20% below the heady levels of a few years ago. The median number of days to sell is also elevated, reflecting a sluggish market in which properties sit unsold for longer. It rose to 50 days in June, and has averaged 47 in the past 12 months. That's the highest since mid-2023, when interest rates were rising quickly and the economy was in recession. Excluding that period, it's the highest since 2008 and 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis. There are numerous reasons to explain our underperforming housing market. For a start, affordability is still awful. Prices have been flat for two years, having fallen almost 20% from the peak before that. However, the rise during 2020 and 2021 was so dramatic (48% in less than two years) that, even after the multi-year slump, prices are still more than 20% above pre-Covid levels. That boom was primarily driven by ultra-low borrowing costs, with the one-year mortgage rate falling to 2.2%. In data going back to the early 1960s, there's never been a time when interest rates have come close to being that low, and we might not see them again in our lifetime. Many would argue that prices were pumped up so much during that period that they might need to fall further (or at least languish for a little longer) for reality to catch up. Other costs of home ownership – such as rates, insurance and maintenance – have also increased sharply, while the policy backdrop hasn't been friendly to investors. Net migration has declined much more than expected, after hitting record highs in 2023. To use a technical phrase, it's fallen off a cliff. New migrant numbers (of working age) were comfortably above 100,000 a year 18 months ago, but they've dropped to fewer than 10,000 today. Apart from the Covid-era when the borders were closed, that's the lowest since the 2010-13 period, and before that 2000-01. For many of those who are still here, job security is a concern. The unemployment rate has been steadily increasing for three years, and it's sitting at 5.1%. Apart from one quarter during the unusual Covid period, that's the highest in more than eight years. People are reluctant to make major financial commitments when they don't feel completely safe in their jobs. Unemployment is expected to push a little higher, so a shift in sentiment could be unlikely until late this year or into next year. Nobody can accurately say where house prices will go from here. Plenty of people incorrectly predicted declines in early 2020, and just as many expected a recovery to be under way by now. Reserve Bank forecasts suggest prices will grow by 4.2% annually over the coming three years. That's below the long-term average (which has been 5.7% since 1990) but it's slightly above inflation, GDP and population growth expectations. All these headwinds, as well as a high number of listings, have swung the power balance in favour of buyers, including those looking for a first home. That's unlikely to change in the near term, which is good news in many ways. I'm not sure if any of us should be hoping for another boom. A stable-but-sluggish period for house prices could be a more desirable outcome for the economy, and society overall. For the first time in a long while, the housing market is working more for buyers than sellers, and that rebalancing might be exactly what we need. Mark Lister is investment director at Craigs Investment Partners. The information in this article is provided for information only, is intended to be general in nature, and does not take into account your financial situation, objectives, goals, or risk tolerance. Before making any investment decision, Craigs Investment Partners recommends you contact an investment adviser.


Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Farming calls again after stint steering Oritain
Otago businessman Grant Cochrane was always going to return to farming, he just got side-tracked a little on the way. Business and rural editor Sally Rae reports. It's family farming at its finest. After a career in currency trading and business, most recently as the globe-trotting chief executive of Dunedin success story Oritain, Grant Cochrane is looking forward to being grounded — literally. Mr Cochrane has stepped back from his role at Oritain, the global leader in using forensic science to determine product provenance of food, beverages, fibres and pharmaceuticals. After 13 years' involvement, first as an investor and then chief executive and director, it was time to focus on the next chapter. A large chunk of that included his family's farming business Tōtara Hills, a South Otago sheep, beef, deer and carbon operation, near Owaka, and to involve their children was very gratifying for Mr Cochrane and his wife Andrea. From growing up on a block of land on the Taieri, Mr Cochrane always wanted to be a farmer. Back when he left school and saw a programme which featured John Key as a currency trader, he decided to get into currency trading. Ironically, a few decades later, he managed to persuade Sir John — who by then had added Prime Minister and a knighthood to his CV — to join the board of Oritain. But throughout his career, farming was always the vision and, while Mr Cochrane might have got side-tracked with other things, it was something he was always going to return to. After completing a bachelor of commerce (finance) degree at the University of Otago, Mr Cochrane headed to London to start a career in currency trading. He spent 11 years primarily in London, with stints in Zurich, Singapore, Tokyo and New York, working for various European and American institutions including Credit Suisse, Citibank and Royal Bank of Canada. He and his wife later decided to return New Zealand to raise a family and to farm. Mr Cochrane bought the home farm in the Catlins in 1998, and spent 12 years managing the farming business. They moved to Dunedin, for their children's education, and he became managing director of A. G. Foley Ltd and got involved with Oritain. The farm was leased out. He was the founding chairman of Oritain — created by Prof Russell Frew and Dr Helen Darling at the University of Otago in 2008 — and chief executive for more than a decade, moving his family to Switzerland. Luxury high-end fashion and retail companies, including Lacoste, Supima and Primark, and food producers such as a2 Milk and Nescafe, used Oritain to assure customers the items they bought were genuine and produced from an ethical supply chain. The company could create a unique fingerprint from products globally and prove its provenance. Its science could pinpoint the exact area a product or raw material came from, within metres. Switzerland, with its central European location, had been a great place to be based and it was also very pro-business. It was well organised, very safe and offered high quality education, healthcare and transport. ''It's been very good for us but nothing beats the community of rural South Otago,'' Mr Cochrane said. They missed that sense of community and there was the appeal of a rural community to return to. Working overseas, both in banking and commerce, he discovered it was very much transaction first while, in New Zealand's rural communities, it was relationships and people first. Returning home had been a stark reminder of that, he said. Stepping back from Oritain had been in the back of his mind and, once the Series C capital raise was completed in mid-2023, it became more front of mind. Oritain raised $US57 million to develop technology and expand into new markets and industries. ''The time seemed right, I'd done it for 12 years ... it was a big commitment,'' he said. Asked what he was most proud of at Oritain, Mr Cochrane quipped: ''survival''. With the failure rate of start-ups estimated at 92%, survival was good. But probably the biggest highlights were getting the company to a successful Series C capital raise and the team that had been built at Oritain. There was a very strong culture — ''a real Kiwi culture with a can-do attitude'' — and that had been taken off-shore. The company had been ambitious and it had attracted ''fantastic'' people. Commercialising science was challenging, but probably a bigger challenge was managing and maintaining culture while taking a business offshore. To build something special and attract people like Sir John Key to be part of it was very gratifying. Sir John initially said no — as he had previously to many other companies and organisations that had approached him when he left politics in late 2016 — but Mr Cochrane proved persuasive and Sir John really liked the story He had been exposed to the company while doing advisory work for kiwifruit marketer Zespri, which used Oritain's technology to trace kiwifruit being illegally grown in China. Last year, Oritain expanded its international reach, opening an office in Singapore to join those in London, Washington DC, Singapore, Auckland and Dunedin, which were home, in total, to more than 200 staff. Mr Cochrane made that announcement while in Singapore with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's delegation, which was representing New Zealand businesses' interests in priority South East Asian markets. Quipping that the next day he was in the Owaka pub, Mr Cochrane said he had been fortunate to have been able to have operated in two different worlds. But home was the farm. Having bought neighbouring land, the Cochranes were back farming a total land area of 2498ha, with the help of staff — ''it's Totara Hills version 2.0,'' he said. The intention was to run the farming operation as one. They wanted to farm ''simply and well and profitably'' but also do things a little differently, thinking of ways to benefit the land and also use out-of-the-box thinking. They wanted to farm sustainably — both financially but also very much long-term environmentally — and were looking at things like regenerative agriculture. Mr Cochrane believed that was an opportunity for New Zealand; many farmers were already employing lot of the principles already like multi-species, rotational grazing and reducing chemical use. They wanted to eat the produce off their farm and it needed to be produced in a way they were comfortable with, he said. It was also an inter-generational farm — Mr Cochrane's father had worked on it and now daughter Sophie and son Andrew were getting involved — and the family wanted to be part of the farming community and wider Catlins community. Sophie Cochrane said they hoped that as well as having the farm as their home, it would also be a springboard for ideas and for other people in the community ''to do cool things''. She and her brother, who is in his second year of university in Canada, were keen on developing eco or agri-tourism on the property, and wanted to do that in partnership with the community. They were keen for a walking track on not only their property but also hopefully involving the surrounding area. Miss Cochrane, who has been away from New Zealand for nine years, spent her last secondary school year overseas, studying by correspondence. Both his children had benefited from growing up in New Zealand but also from seeing the rest of the world, Mr Cochrane believed. Knowing there was a home to return to also kept them feeling grounded in the land and the experience also made them appreciate what they had in New Zealand, Miss Cochrane said. She completed an arts degree in politics, sociology and East European studies at UCL (University College London) and a master's degree in environmental anthropology — how people related to the land and vice-versa — and did her thesis on the Otago region. While in London, she did an internship at the House of Lords. While she had not particularly used either degree in her job, they were ''wonderful to do''. Now working in film and television in the UK, she was fulfilling a dream she had since she was little. For both father and daughter, a simple life in South Otago was appealing, and Mr Cochrane saw a ''real movement'' towards that simplicity and cleaner living . ''I think we have that in New Zealand and take it for granted,'' he said. People were also looking for real relationships and authenticity, something the country had in ''bucketloads too''. The Cochranes saw lots of opportunities on Tōtara Hills to diversify. Those they had taken on farm tours were ''blown away'' by New Zealand farming systems. Farmers did not tell their story well enough and agri or eco-tourism was a good conduit to hero those farming systems. Mr Cochrane felt very optimistic for the New Zealand agricultural sector, saying land use would change but what that land produced would be increasingly sought after. Farming was at an exciting stage and there were lots of opportunities. ''Love it or hate it'', the Emissions Trading Scheme also provided revenue opportunities for farmers, he said. At Oritain, the company had been very close to brands and understood what customers wanted. Getting closer to consumers probably impacted the way his family farmed; producers needed to be vigilant and aligned to what consumers wanted, he said. Asked whether the family would market their produce themselves, Mr Cochrane believed there were bigger gains for the industry by people working together. He used to sell venison at the Otago Farmers' Market and he loved the connection with consumers, understanding why they bought a particular cut and what they were going to do with it. It was a great way of connecting consumers to the land. Contrary to what people might think, start-up life was not glamorous. Mr Cochrane estimated he spent 150 to 200 days a year travelling — ''if I never got on another plane, I'd be happy'' — over the past decade. There was pressure to ''get stuff done'' and flights were often done at night to avoid hotel bills. He was extremely proud of what Oritain had achieved and he looked forward to watching what its ''amazing'' team continued to achieve, under his successor, new chief executive Alyn Franklin. Oritain was a company which was well ahead of its time. It now had a ''fantastic springboard'' to continue growing and he believed its service would only become more relevant in a heightened geo-political world. In many ways, the likes of Oritain was part of the future of New Zealand — having companies that exported a service to add value to global companies from New Zealand IP, he said. Mr Cochrane cited the examples of Rocket Lab, Halter and Animation Research, saying there were many brilliant businesses in New Zealand. Halter, the virtual fencing and animal management company founded by Craig Piggott, was a great example of leveraging New Zealand's agricultural expertise to create a product. Agri-tech in New Zealand had been in a sweet spot since Gallagher pioneered electrical fencing and, in a way, Oritain was part of that agritech sector. But now Mr Cochrane would be following Oritain's progress from the sideline as he pulled on his boots ''Right now, I just want to get a dog coming back to me and learn how to ride a horse again. ''My aspirations at the moment are very much to spend time with family and the farm.''


Otago Daily Times
3 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
A prescription for dismay, disbelief
Everything is going up. The costs of butter, milk and cheese, fruit and vegetables, rents, rates and electricity are rising, some of them faster than belief. Annual inflation has lifted to 2.7%, according to the consumer price index. There can be no doubt New Zealanders are grappling with the escalating cost of living. The government says it is all about cutting costs for Kiwis, something we have seen with its policies and its energetic drive to cut the public service and put thousands of skilled workers out of jobs. However, despite its much-vaunted approach to trim things, some of which didn't need much pruning, the coalition is still releasing big pots of money for projects which have its favour and tickle its fancy, or the fancies of its cadres. As a consequence of that favouritism, something else is going up. Advice be blowed, let's have a third medical school in New Zealand at a time when the government has been doing everything it can to minimise the importance of, and squeeze the life out of, Dunedin's desperately needed new hospital. Until Monday afternoon's announcement that the University of Waikato's persistent and somewhat personal bid for a medical school had been approved, there had been perhaps a hope that surely common sense might prevail and the government wouldn't, after all, go along with the proposal. Such sanguine thinking, however, was always held in check by the knowledge that this government has already shown several times that logic, facts and evidence to the contrary will not stop it supporting something which it is hell-bent on delivering for its followers. At the heart of Waikato's proposal was something few could disagree with — that the country urgently needs to do something about the state and delivery of rural healthcare. Access to timely and effective medical services for those communities has been a big concern for many years, one which has only continued to grow. But does it take a spanking new medical school costing several hundred million dollars, and growing, to ensure rural targets will be met? No. There is no reason why the medical schools at the University of Otago and the University of Auckland could not have been funded to train more doctors at a significantly lower cost than launching a new school, a point they clearly made to the government. Even the Treasury advised against the wisdom of proceeding with this pet project, as did the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Commission, warning that the expense, the duplication and the logistical challenges raised red flags for them. In spite of that, the government and Waikato University forged on regardless. Health Minister Simeon Brown announced a development with costs which have changed significantly from those pledged by the National Party before the last election. Then, National said it would provide $280 million for the new school and the university would need to find $100m. Now, the government will disburse $82.85m towards it, and Waikato will have to stump up more than $150m. The final cost, of course, is bound to be higher than current expectations. A lot has been written about links between National and the university and its vice-chancellor Neil Quigley, and also with consultant Steven Joyce, a former National government minister. Without getting too deeply into that, we are concerned that this is little more than an overt example of pork-barrel politics. We are also troubled and disappointed, yet again, at the lack of transparency around the government's decision-making, particularly over health matters. Whenever it makes pronouncements which it knows are likely to be contentious, the accompanying documents seem to take ages to surface — if they ever do. That in itself probably speaks volumes about the consideration of the evidence. It's difficult to stay calm and reasoned and attempt to rise above the feeling this government cares not a jot for the South. When one sees what a charmed life this Waikato proposal has apparently had through the coalition's approval process, and compare that with the absolute shambles it has promulgated with the new Dunedin hospital and its obvious level of disinterest in the project, it is hard to remain philosophical. Once again, this government has let us down.