Colourful rich-lister
Earl Raymond Hagaman CNZM, businessman: b Los Angeles, September 12, 1925; d Christchurch, May 25, 2017, aged 92.
Earl Hagaman will be remembered as Christchurch’s colourful Californian millionaire owner of the Scenic Hotel Group, not shy of throwing fancy dress parties or expressing his strong political views.
Born in Los Angeles in 1925, Hagaman would describe in interviews a Depression-era upbringing where home was ‘‘a half-built shed’’. His father was a used-car salesman who worked ‘‘to get just enough for whisky and poker’’.
He became an accountant and made his money syndicating oil investments. Hagaman liked to tell of his high-powered life in the 1970s when he was meeting people such as Aristotle Onassis and President Richard Nixon.
Hagaman also had an expensive succession of wives. A third marriage that ended in 1982 was still making headlines 20 years later as he was pursued through the courts in California and New Zealand for a better settlement.
It was in 1980 that he first visited New Zealand and fell in love with it. He stayed with a champion jet-boating friend and fellow Californian, Ralph Brown, in Queenstown. Within a week he had bought a house there and decided they should go into business together.
It was also a factor that the US oil business was changing – certain production subsidies were being removed by President Ronald Reagan.
With Hagaman providing the investment cash, their Scenic Hotel Group started with the purchase of the 48-room Graham Motor Inn in Franz Josef, which they eventually expanded to the 130-room Scenic Hotel Franz Josef.
Next came a deal for Dunedin’s historic Southern Cross Hotel and then a succession of takeovers of various ex-government Tourist Hotel Corporation (THC) lodges spotted along the tour bus routes.
It was a clever formula. For the cost of a quick refurbishment, Hagaman built up a hotel chain connecting the overnight tourist pitstops in places like Picton, Blenheim, Haast and Milford Sound.
By this time, the mid-1980s, Hagaman was already in his 60s and into an ailing fourth marriage. He hired Christchurch-born Lani, in her early 20s, as a company financial controller and ‘‘one thing led to another’’. She was soon his fifth wife.
Their age gap caused natural comment. Many speculated about how long it would be before Hagaman was relieved of yet another portion of his wealth. But those working alongside them said Lani was very much an equal business partner. And in fact the one with the hands-on drive to build the hotel side of his investments.
Hagaman’s focus was on wheeling and dealing in commercial property. He came to own a wide range of holdings, including a shopping mall in Picton – he thought it could be the next Queenstown – and blocks of industrial land in Christchurch and Dunedin.
Brown died of a heart attack in 1995, a week after winning a world title at 69. By that time, Scenic Hotel was firmly based in Christchurch.
Earl and Lani bought a classic 1930s white mansion in Ilam – owned by earlier Christchurch notables like the Ballantynes. They had three children, Zane, Toya and Skye, and would be seen out shopping in a bright red 1959 Cadillac convertible.
Hagaman became a fixture on the annual rich list with a fortune estimated to be about $180m. He had two company planes hangared at Christchurch Airport – ready to visit any hotel – and a 50-metre launch moored in Picton harbour.
As well as being part of the Christchurch social scene and a well-known supporter of charitable causes, Hagaman also was not shy about using his money to back his political beliefs. Both the National Party and ACT were frequent beneficiaries.
‘‘I’ve supported Sir Roger [Douglas] pretty much from day one,’’ Hagaman said. Lani made sizeable donations in her own name too. The couple clearly acted as a team.
And it was political contributions that brought their name back into the limelight last year when Labour leader Andrew Little suggested a possible connection between a $101,000 campaign donation to National and the subsequent awarding of a management contract for a Niuean beach resort.
Little was prompted for a comment and agreed something ‘‘stinks to high heaven’’. By this stage, Hagaman was too poorly to respond publicly himself, but Lani immediately hit back with lawyers and a defamation case seeking $2.3 million damages – enough to beggar Little.
When the case came to High Court in April, Little – claiming the qualified privilege of political debate – won a somewhat uncertain victory.
The jury cleared him of defaming Lani in his six recorded comments on the Niue deal. But it said that in one of the comments he had defamed Hagaman – although it then could not decide whether Little was covered by his defence of privilege.
The judge eventually ruled privilege did apply. Yet that is still subject to possible appeal. And Lani has said she is determined to force a retrial for the sake of the Scenic Hotel Group’s name and Hagaman’s business legacy.
In truth, Scenic is a bit player by international hotel chain standards.
Since 2012, it has been investing in a Pacific Islands expansion, hoping to use Tonga as a hub for a circuit of hotels. But even as New Zealand’s largest home-grown operator, in the main cities its accommodation has been either back-packers or its mid-range Heartland hotels.
The core business remains the tourist hotels that fill in gaps in the state highway map from Paihia to Gore, and which are also often the main employer and economic backbone of these small townships.
The importance of this was recognised in a number of honours given to Hagaman.
He was awarded the inaugural New Zealand Hotel Industry Achievement award in 2009 and Scenic Hotel Group was named New Zealand Tourism Export Council Operator of the Year in 2012.
In 2014 Hagaman was then made Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business, tourism and philanthropy. Through trusts, the Hagaman family have given more than $10m to a wide variety of sporting and community charities.