Publicity shy, but he’s a man with global perspective – and keeps one eye on his legacy
It has been a long time since the Chandler family lived in New Zealand, but that is where their success story began more than 100 years ago.
Christopher Chandler’s grandfather, Edward, was an advertising man who emigrated from Chicago early in the 20th century. He married his secretary and they had three sons, two of whom were killed flying Spitfires for the British air force in the Second World War.
The surviving son, Robert Chandler, served in the navy and returned home after peace was declared, finding work as a beekeeper with a company owned by Sir Edmund Hillary, who would soon become the first man to climb Everest, in 1953.
Two years later, Robert was on a round-the-world trip when he met his wife Marija in Croatia. The couple settled back in the small town of Matangi on New Zealand’s North Island.
In the early 1970s they opened an upmarket department store, Chandlers.
At the age of 24 their son, Richard Chandler, took over the family business with his brother Christopher.
Together the siblings expanded the company to 10 stores and began to grow the busniess into international markets, specialising in high-risk ventures that would eventually make them billionaires.
In the mid-1980s, the entire family moved from New Zealand to Monaco, buying a villa previously owned first by Charlie Chaplin and then David Niven for their parents.
They enjoyed spectacular success in the Hong Kong property market, which had plunged after the British handover in 1997.
Their Sovereign Global Investment fund also did well in post-Soviet Russia, Brazil and South Korea, with a reputation for making money during times of turbulence.
By 2007 the brothers each decided to go their own way, splitting their assets 50-50, with Christopher setting up the Legatum Group at Dubai International Finance Centre. The company name is Latin for legacy or gift.
The Legatum Foundation was set up in London two years later with the aim of developing sustainable prosperity.
Christopher is so shy of publicity that his profile in Forbes does not have a photograph. He is reported to be married with at least one son.
A profile for Institutional Investor in 2006 said he enjoyed “windsurfing, water-skiing and riding motorcycles”, although at the age of 58 it is not clear how many of these pastimes he still pursues.
His politics are kept equally close to his chest, except with the agenda pursued by his Legatum Foundation.
In a 2008 interview Idbal Quadir, director of the foundation at the time, said Christopher Chandler was a “very global person who cares about how the world is shaping up”.