The 2025 NBR Rich List: Listers Crack $100 Billion, NBR Launches First Women's List
09 June
New Zealand's leading wealth creators are now collectively worth more than $100 billion, the 2025 NBR Rich List reveals.
The latest NBR Rich List, published today, profiles 119 Kiwi individuals and families who are building enterprises, growing the country's fortunes, creating jobs, and giving back. That includes a dozen Newcomers to the 2025 Rich List, collectively worth $4.3b. The addition of those Newcomers, as well as growth among some of the country's wealthiest, has pushed the total valuation of this year's Rich List to $102.1b, up from $95.55b last year. The Newcomers include names like Jamie Beaton – who becomes a Rich Lister after the company he co-founded, Crimson Education, was valued at more than $1b in a capital raise last November – alongside several families who have been operating and building enormously successful businesses for decades.
Two women also feature in our Newcomers this year, becoming the only two women to feature on the Rich List in their own right since 2019. They are Anna Mowbray, who has moved on from Zuru to build a wide-ranging portfolio of investments, and Lucy Liu, a New Zealand citizen whose company was valued at more than $10b in a capital raise just last month.
Their success has been the catalyst for a new feature we've introduced as part of this year's coverage: the Women's List.
Zuru founders Nick and Mat Mowbray, meanwhile, retain the top spot with a $20b valuation. Overall, New Zealand now also has 18 billionaires, up from 16 last year. 'The country's Rich Listers together employ thousands of people and generate billions of dollars of economic activity,' NBR Rich List editor Hamish McNicol says. 'The Rich List celebrates those individuals and families, telling in-depth stories of how they have built their enterprises, how they are tackling global economic volatility, and what they are investing back into their communities.'
The Women's List
The 2025 Rich List also sees the launch of the inaugural Women's List, which is a series of interviews and profiles with 14 of the country's leading, and most successful, businesswomen.
We are not publishing assessments of their net worth, although generally estimate them to each be worth between at least $20m and $100m (Mowbray and Liu excluding). Each have built businesses which collectively have employed thousands and contributed greatly to the domestic economy: they are true wealth creators worthy of recognition and celebration alongside the Rich List.
They also have different perspectives and each tell a story we believe invaluable to those looking for the keys to business success.
That list includes the likes of Naomi Ballantyne, who built life insurer Partners Life into what she says is the country's first female-business to sell for $1b. There's also Carmen Vicelich, the founder of Valocity, a fintech that streamlines property valuation and real estate processes and is now used in more than 3500 cities around the world.
'We've got lots of families and couples on the Rich List but this year we have two female Newcomers in Anna Mowbray and Lucy Liu,' McNicol says. 'They, along with some encouragement from local women in business, prompted us to consider what we could do as part of our coverage to highlight the success of our leading businesswomen.' 'They've each built large and impressive businesses and share fascinating insights into the unique challenges they have faced in doing so.'
Elevating NZ Inc
The overall theme of the 2025 NBR Rich List, meanwhile, is Elevating NZ Inc. We asked each of the Rich Listers what one thing we could do to make New Zealand a better place for doing business.
Several key themes emerged from the many responses we got. Overall, there is optimism about New Zealand's place in the world, particularly in the context of an increasingly volatile global environment.
'Opening the country up to more foreign investment and drastically improving the education system were the most common areas cited for change,' McNicol says. 'But there were some other really interesting ideas in there as well, particularly around things like tax and regulation.'
'They have no shortage of ideas.'
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