Last weekend, Australia’s third-richest citizen, Harry Triguboff, sat down with his family to begin succession planning.
That conversation ended a flirtation with selling his Meriton Group to the Chinese in a deal potentially worth $12 billion and will see his grandchildren eventually taking over the apartment building empire.
“I told them to do what they like,” the 82-year-old Triguboff says. “I built it for me. If a dynasty comes of it, so much the better.”
Triguboff says daughter Sharon’s sons Daniel, 24, and Ariel Hendler, 22, are interested in the development side of the 51-year-old business, which builds about 2500 units a year in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, while his other daughter Orna and her daughter Ella Lizor prefer the investment arm.
Meriton Group owns about 3200 serviced apartments and about 2000 longer-term rental units. On top of this is a property management business that oversees 2200 apartments for other owners.
Daniel Hendler has been increasingly involved, last year breaking ground on his first project: a four-level, 41-unit building at Epping, in Sydney’s northwest.
His younger brother Ariel is studying property economics at the University of Technology and will also move initially into project management, while Ella Lizor, 29, has run marketing at Meriton.
“I told my daughters, think what you want to do, so I can plan it,” Triguboff told The Australian.
“They said they want to continue the business.”
Last year Triguboff began talks about selling Meriton, travelling to Guangzhou to meet Chinese building groups, with Country Garden emerging as the frontrunner.
In January, he suggested a $12bn-$15bn price tag for Meriton as the housing boom stoked the company’s workbook.
A sale is now off the agenda, Triguboff says.
Daniel, who started work at Meriton after his property economics degree and attends most meetings with his grandfather, is likely to take on more of the company’s management. “He has to hurry,” Triguboff says.
Ariel will also work on an individual apartment project. It is important to see how the grandchildren fit in with the workforce, Triguboff says.
No doubt, says Triguboff proudly, his own father would have been pleased to see the family now.
With the family history in textiles in Russia and China, and later in Israel — Triguboff, named Australia’s third-wealthiest person on the BRW rich list with a fortune of $10.2bn — started his own factory in historic city Caesarea on the Israeli coast.
He tried working in textiles in Australia, but the industry was already suffering structural problems and he moved on and started to develop units in 1963.
Triguboff, who earlier this year finalised his biggest site acquisition, which totalled $232 million for a 3000-apartment site in Sydney’s Pagewood, says apartment prices are starting to flatten.
“Prices don’t seem to be going up, they are not going down either. But demand is very strong,” Triguboff says.
This article first appeared in The Australian Business Review.