Richard Chandler (businessman)

Richard Fred Chandler (born 1958/1959) is a New Zealand-born billionaire businessman. He is chairman of the Clermont Group, a Singapore-based conglomerate. Chandler "has a reputation for buying struggling companies and successfully rebuilding them," according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation News.

Early life
Born in Matangi, Chandler is one of the three sons of beekeeper Robert Chandler and his wife, businesswoman Marija Chandler, known as Ana Tzarev, who launched and operated Chandler House, a department store in Hamilton, New Zealand. He attended the University of Auckland, earning a degree in law in 1982. Chandler attended a boarding school. He obtained a bachelor of commerce from the University of Auckland in 1979 and wrote his master's thesis at the same institution in 1982, researching board structure and accountability in New Zealand.

Career
Chandler began his career at Arthur Andersen in Auckland and then worked at KPMG in London. In 1982, he returned to New Zealand and became the CEO of Chandler House. Chandler was formerly CEO of the Sovereign group of companies, in partnership with his younger brother, Christopher. Between 1986 and 2006, Sovereign invested in companies and governments in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, and in industries including telecommunications, electric utilities, steel, oil and gas, banking and oil refining.

They agreed to split their assets in 2006, with Richard creating Orient Global and Christopher starting Legatum Capital. Orient Global changed its name to Richard Chandler Corporation in April 2010 before becoming the Chandler Corporation in 2013, and the Clermont Group in 2016. Richard's investment style has been described as deep value investing, primarily in global emerging markets and especially in distress situations.

Richard Chandler's business ventures have been tinged with themes of contrarian investment, corporate governance and social responsibility, especially by investing in and managing companies with national socio-economic implications. He once told Institutional Investor, "We do have altruistic motives that some investors who are looking for a path of least resistance find hard to understand, but we don’t want to be defined by our corporate governance battles. We are value investors with a sense of responsibility, not activists."

The Chandler brothers were involved in a highly publicized incident in 2005. Sovereign sold its investment in South Korea's SK Corp., at the time South Korea's fourth-largest oil conglomerate, after the board refused to oust chairman and CEO Chey Tae Won. Chey had been convicted of accounting fraud for illegally trading stocks. Sovereign had invested in the company just after Chey's arrest, hoping to turn it around. Richard Chandler and his brother tried twice unsuccessfully to remove Chey and ultimately pulled out for ethical reasons. By that point they had profited US$728 million from their investment.

In 2007 Richard Chandler launched a US$100 million education initiative in the developing world with the focus to build low-cost private education opportunities in India. Furthermore, he invested in a global chain of international K-12 schools called the Nobel Education Network. In Bangladesh in 2011, he founded Newtown International.

Multiple media outlets reported in 2012 that Chandler considered investing in the Tasmanian logging company, Gunns, but ultimately decided not to.

Yahoo! Finance reported in June 2013 that Chandler's company acquired an 80% stake in Hoan My Medical Corporation. According to the article's author, the transaction "complements the healthcare businesses the Chandler Corporation owns and operates in Indonesia and the Philippines, positioning it to become a leading private healthcare provider in Asia." As of 2022, Chandler’s company is the sole owner of Hoan My.

Philanthropy
In November 2017, Richard Chandler was invited to be a core partner in Co-Impact, a new global model for collaborative philanthropy and social change at scale. Other core partners include Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeffrey Skoll, Romesh and Kathy Wadhwani, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Personal life
Chandler is married to Kady Leyau, a business woman, former model, actress, and VJ at Taiwan MTV.