Dealmaker § The Addict

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The Addict

Even after 40 years of doing deals, Paul Kelly still can’t make himself stop. Rather than retire, the legendary specialist is developing a Shangri-La, a vineyard — and a new way to penetrate the Chinese market

By: Danielle Sacks
Premiere Issue , Page 104

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White sand beaches wrap around New Zealand’s Karikari Peninsula like a layer of fat on a prime rib. Inside its 3,000 bucolic acres await 18 holes of rolling golf course and a vineyard as intoxicating from the aromas of the property’s 10,000 native plants as from its bottomless glasses of syrah.

Fresh oysters from Rangaunu Harbor, cheese from Mahoe and golden saffron from the Hokianga are served up as nonchalantly as a sunset horseback ride. And when Paul Kelly flies into Carrington resort — where above 80 degrees is considered a heat wave and below 60 is a deep freeze — he has finally arrived in paradise.

But he’ll never stay. Sure, the legendary investment banker — who has spent practically every weekend of his last 42 years in a fluorescent-lit office — could buy a one-way ticket here, light up a cigar and relish in the tens of millions his firms have made cutting hundreds of deals in the Far East.

Not only because at age 66 he’s still running nine of his own businesses, including Knox & Co., his investment bank. Or because he continues to log 40,000-mile weeks, racing from Japan to Thailand to China, preferring adrenaline over, as he puts it, “stretching out meetings and having three hours to kill — that’s awful.”

Or because he’s long surpassed the athlete-like shelf life of most of his banker brethren. “I’m starting to feel like the last of the Mohicans here,” Kelly confesses in the Brahmin intonations of his native Wellesley, Massachusetts. He should surrender himself to this New Zealand utopia because he owns every spanking inch of it.

But he can’t. “I’ve always had this problem with relaxing,” he says with an embarrassed laugh. Indeed, his Pacific-blue eyes wear blood-red evidence of exhaustion throughout. The man who owns a tournament-quality golf course doesn’t even own golf clubs, and the only vacations he takes are three-day appearances in Florida to visit his four daughters and eight grandkids. “I’ve always had the sense that if I took off longer than two weeks in a row, I’d never come back,” he says. “I just don’t want to risk it.” And even when he’s not working, it’s the only thing he’s thinking about.

“He will never hang up his boots,” says Glenn Crafford, managing director of M&A at Deutsche Bank, who first worked with Kelly in the ’80s. “He doesn’t live the kind of life you hear about other bankers of his era. He doesn’t have a second home in Nantucket or a private plane. He doesn’t have those kinds of toys. He’s more a creator or a builder than someone who sits back and enjoys the fruits of his labor from the last 40 years.”

So like an alcoholic who gives up hard liquor in favor of beer, Kelly’s doing the only thing a lifelong dealmaker knows how to do: cutting another deal under the guise of relaxation. Like all his deals, the motive for this closet intellectual is as much about making money as it is about conquering an entirely new impossibility.

“Whereas I think most investment bankers wait to see a trend established and then jump on the bandwagon,” Crafford says, “Paul’s always had the ability to spot opportunities very early — what’s going to happen two or three years into the future — and, more importantly, he has the courage to act on his thesis.”

So ever since he purchased these left-to-die wetlands and virgin beaches on the northern coast of New Zealand in 1996, Kelly has resuscitated them, plowing $20 million into a five-star resort (Carrington), an award-winning winery (Karikari Estate), a black-angus cattle farm (Carrington Farms) and three thriving vacation-home communities (via his Edgewater Developers).

But it would be too easy for him to stop there. An Asia specialist, Kelly remains eager to play in China, and is thus muscling his wine into the mix. With Chinese wine consumption growing at seven times the global rate, last year Kelly cut a deal with ChangYu Group, China’s largest winery, to export co-branded versions of his Karikari reds and whites.

“In one day, China could drink up all the wine New Zealand puts out in a week,” Kelly says with a smirk as a waiter pours him a glass of chilled Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc. Today, he’s far from New Zealand, lunching at Westport, Connecticut’s WASPy Saugatuck Rowing Club, wearing the state’s standard uniform of brown leather tasseled loafers, yellow socks and a gray manatee belt holding up his khakis.

It’s not his typical lunch, which usually consists of a powder shake guzzled at his desk, and he appears more interested in the handiwork of the club’s crew shells than in flashing smiles to neighbors he admits he should probably know after living in this area for some 30 years. Then, in a rare moment of leisure, he lets himself enjoy a swig of the Oyster Bay.

“I’ve had better,” he says, his full head of silver hair looking like a wet comb has just been run through it. “Actually, I make better.”

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