Sir Douglas unafraid to ENTER LION’S DEN

• Published date: 13 April 2024
• Publication title: Weekend Herald

The toddler was Douglas Myers, the son and heir to a brewery, liquor and hotel empire that was then New Zealand Breweries and, later, Lion Breweries and Lion Nathan. The moment was captured on a home movie camera Myers’ father, Kenneth, bought that year, and is described in The Myers, Paul Goldsmith and Michael Bassett’s outstanding book covering four generations of the family

The young Myers was born into a grand lifestyle by New Zealand standards. In the background is the family’s sprawling estate Glen Innes, a huge Edwardian-style home set on 24 hectares in Auckland’s Glendowie, overlooking the Tāmaki estuary and Hauraki Gulf. The property was run like an English country home with a chauffeur, cook, a butler, maids, gardeners and cleaners.

It was wealth made largely on the back of booze, an amalgamation of breweries owned mainly by a group of New Zealand Jewish families who dominated the industry dating back to the 19th century. The business of brewing — and, later, wines and spirits — would one day enable young Myers to become one of the richest people in New Zealand, up there with commercial property investor Bob Jones and pulp and paper magnate John Spencer.

Myers would head a company with a turnover of more than $1 billion and, after selling his shareholding in Lion Nathan in the late 1990s, retire with more money than he could ever spend.

In a series of shrewd and at times risky takeovers and buyouts, the late Sir Douglas Myers would leave behind a major company that was formed more than 100 years ago when 10 of the country’s largest breweries amalgamated to form New Zealand Breweries in June 1923, issuing 500,000 shares to the public.

One of those companies was the Myers’ family brewery, Campbell & Ehrenfried, which had passed to Louis Ehrenfried’s nephew, Arthur Myers, Doug Myers’ grandfather, on his death. Since then a series of takeovers and name changes make the company’s history look like a chaotic Monopoly...