Sir Michael Friedlander
Founder, Samson Corporation
Sir Michael Friedlander is a New Zealand businessman and philanthropist, and one of the richest people in New Zealand. Through his private company Samson Corporation he has built one of Auckland's largest privately held property portfolios, quietly assembled over more than half a century.
Seven decades in Auckland property
Born in 1936, Friedlander has been a force in the Auckland property market for more than seventy years, and one of only a handful of people to feature on the National Business Review Rich List every year since it began in 1986. Rather than chase headline developments, he built Samson through patient buying and long-term ownership of commercial buildings.
The portfolio stretches across the city's heartland, from Ponsonby and Parnell out to Te Atatu, and takes in office blocks, suburban retail strips and industrial property estimated to be worth well over two billion dollars. The business is now run alongside his sons Daniel and Jason.
The landlord who cut the rent
Friedlander is known as an unusually hands-on and fair-minded landlord. When the Covid-19 pandemic emptied shops and offices in 2020, he cut the rent for many of his Auckland tenants by up to eighty per cent to help them survive, a gesture that drew national attention in a sector not known for it.
A quiet philanthropist
For all his wealth, Friedlander keeps a famously low public profile. He established the Friedlander Foundation in the 1960s, which has supported tertiary education and research, youth development, the arts and the Jewish community for decades. He was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to business and philanthropy, and is known as much for his generosity as for the property empire he built.
About this profile
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