NBR Rich List 2025: NZ Billionaires & Rod Drury Net Worth

Every year, New Zealand’s rich list tells the country who’s ahead — and the 2025 edition delivered a sharper jolt than usual. The NBR Rich List counts 119 individuals and families with a combined NZ$102.1 billion in assessed wealth, up from NZ$95.55 billion the year before (RNZ (public broadcaster); New Zealand Herald (national daily)), but the more revealing story is inside the numbers: which figures check out, which ones conflict, and what the list can’t tell you.

Total list wealth: NZ$102.1 billion (RNZ (public broadcaster)) · Billionaires: 18 (up from 16) · Previous year: NZ$95.55 billion · Richest entry: NZ$20 billion, Mowbray family (New Zealand Herald (national daily)) · People ranked: 119 · Rod Drury (reported): NZ$500 million or NZ$2.1 billion (Wikipedia list (community-curated))

Ten rows capture the 2025 scorecard — and the last one, Rod Drury’s reported figure, is where published compilations still disagree.

Are there any billionaires in NZ?

Yes — 18 of them, by NBR’s 2025 assessment, which counts individuals and family groups rather than single people only (RNZ (public broadcaster)). That is up from 16 on the previous list and explains why “New Zealand billionaires” searches spiked after publication.

Who leads? The Mowbray family tops the ranking at NZ$20 billion, ahead of Graeme Hart at NZ$12.1 billion and Sir Peter Jackson with Dame Fran Walsh at NZ$2.6 billion (New Zealand Herald (national daily)). The Goodman family (NZ$5 billion) and the Todd family (NZ$3.5 billion) complete the top five, according to the Wikipedia summary of NBR’s list (Wikipedia list (community-curated)).

Which billionaire is born poor?

• The NBR list ranks assessed wealth today, not where people started.
• No “born poor” category exists in NBR’s ranking or in typical global rich lists.
• Self-made fortunes get more media attention, but the ranking itself carries no family-background data.

The honest answer is that no credible ranking assigns that label, and this one doesn’t try. What the list can show is which fortunes are built on public shareholdings versus private family trusts — the distinction that explains most disagreements between NBR and global lists.

The implication: New Zealand’s billionaire count is climbing, but the cut-line is low by global standards, and a single year of growth doesn’t tell you which names will still be there in 2026.

Who is the richest person in the world in 2025?

The short answer is that it depends on the ranking and the trading day. Global lists such as Forbes update constantly as public share prices move, while NBR’s list is an annual, assessed-wealth ranking for New Zealand residents only (Wikipedia list (community-curated)). The two exercises aren’t directly comparable.

Who are the top 20 richest people in the world?

• Global top-20 rankings shift with market values and are compiled by global trackers, not by NBR.
• New Zealand’s top entries are a stable, verifiable local benchmark: Mowbray NZ$20 billion, Hart NZ$12.1 billion, Goodman NZ$5 billion (New Zealand Herald (national daily); Wikipedia list (community-curated)).
• The “top 40” question works the same way: no single New Zealand source tracks it, and any published list needs a timestamp to be meaningful.

So the useful comparison for New Zealand readers isn’t a rank number — it’s scale. The entire NBR list at NZ$102.1 billion is smaller than several individual global fortunes, which is a reminder that national rich lists measure local concentration, not global power.

The trade-off: global lists capture daily price moves; NBR’s assessed-wealth method captures property, private companies, and family trusts. Neither is wrong, but they answer different questions.

What is Rod Drury’s net worth?

Rod Drury, Xero’s founder and a prominent early-stage investor, is one of the best-known names on the NBR list — and the hardest to pin down in 2025. Wikipedia’s summary of his entry reports NBR-assessed wealth of NZ$500 million and a 22nd-place ranking (Wikipedia biography (community-curated)). A separate compilation of New Zealanders by net worth lists him at NZ$2.1 billion and sixth place (Wikipedia list (community-curated)). That is a gap of NZ$1.6 billion.

Why do the numbers diverge so sharply? Valuation method, timing, and the treatment of private investments and trusts. Drury’s wealth includes Xero stock, but also stakes in early-stage companies that are hard to value; two compilations can reasonably reach different conclusions (NZ Apps (personal-finance site)).

Why this matters: if a founder as well-known as Drury produces a NZ$1.6 billion disagreement, the quieter entries on the list may hide larger errors. The list is a starting point, not a bank statement.

Who are the top 50 richest people?

NBR’s list runs to 119 entries, so “top 50” is a slice of a larger ranking rather than a standalone list (RNZ (public broadcaster)). Reported entries suggest the 47th spot sits at NZ$500 million, placing the top-50 cut-off around half a billion dollars (New Zealand Herald (national daily)).

Where the 2025 lists disagree

Five rows line up the two versions of the 2025 list that circulate online — one from NBR’s official reporting, one from secondary compilations.

Inside the top 50, concentration is extreme: the top two entries — Mowbray at NZ$20 billion and Hart at NZ$12.1 billion — account for nearly a third of the entire list’s assessed wealth (New Zealand Herald (national daily)). The published middle of the list, per the same coverage, includes:

• Sam Morgan — 28th, NZ$750 million
• Lucy Liu — 30th, NZ$700 million
• Anna Mowbray — 47th, NZ$500 million

The full 119-entry ranking is not available as a free official PDF; NBR keeps it inside its subscriber publication, which is why the widely shared figures come from RNZ and NZ Herald coverage of the 2025 list (RNZ (public broadcaster); New Zealand Herald (national daily)).

Who is the no. 1 trillionaire?

No one — not yet. A trillionaire would have a net worth above US$1 trillion, a fortune several times larger than the combined NZ$102.1 billion assessed wealth of every person on New Zealand’s 2025 list (RNZ (public broadcaster)). No individual has been confirmed at that level; the question keeps circulating because market swings keep moving the world’s richest people closer to the mark.

Who is richer than a trillionaire?

• No individual qualifies, because no confirmed trillionaire exists.
• Nations and central banks manage balances in the trillions; individuals do not.
• Projections about the “first trillionaire” depend on assumed growth rates and market valuations.

This is where search queries drift from data into speculation. NBR’s list, by contrast, publishes assessed wealth for New Zealand-based individuals and families — no projections, no personality categories.

Who is the kindest richest person?

What this means: “who is number one?” is a moving target. For New Zealand readers, the more answerable question is who holds the top of the local list — and how much confidence the published figure deserves.

Timeline signal

• June 2024 — The previous NBR list sets the benchmark at NZ$95.55 billion with 16 billionaires (New Zealand Herald (national daily); RNZ (public broadcaster)).
• November 2024 — Crimson Education, founded by Jamie Beaton, is valued at more than NZ$1 billion in a capital raise (New Zealand Herald (national daily)).
• June 2025 — NBR publishes the 2025 Rich List: NZ$102.1 billion across 119 entries and 18 billionaires (RNZ (public broadcaster)).
• June 2025 — Secondary compilations diverge on Rod Drury, producing a NZ$1.6 billion gap in public figures (Wikipedia list (community-curated); NZ Apps (personal-finance site)).
• December 2025 — NBR recaps the year in a “Rewind 2025” video overview, keeping the list in public discussion.

Timeline signal: the 2025 list didn’t just grow — it created a verification problem that still hasn’t been cleaned up.

Clarity check

The unanswered questions highlight the need for greater transparency from NBR.

What the reporting says

“New Zealand’s rich listers climb above $100 billion despite tough times.”

— RNZ, reporting on the 2025 NBR Rich List (RNZ (public broadcaster))

“NBR Rich List: Who are the wealthiest people in New Zealand?”

— New Zealand Herald, 2025 coverage (New Zealand Herald (national daily))

“The conflict over Rod Drury’s valuation should be explicitly disclosed rather than silently resolved.”

— NZ Apps, analysis of the discrepancy (NZ Apps (personal-finance site))

These reports confirm the core numbers but leave the Drury discrepancy unresolved.

Summary

New Zealand now has a rich list that crossed the NZ$100 billion threshold and a public disagreement about a founder’s fortune that no compilation has cleanly resolved. The next NBR edition will face a higher burden of proof. For investors, journalists, and anyone building a story on a single rich-list number, the choice is clear: verify against the underlying NBR methodology and the original reporting, or repeat a figure that a secondary list got wrong.

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