Ron Brierley, New Zealand businessman
Ronald Alfred Brierley (born 2 August 1937) is a New Zealand born investor and corporate raider, chairman and director of a number of companies in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.He founded R. A. Brierley Investments Ltd (BIL; renamed GuocoLeisure from October 2007) in March 1961 with no capital. By 1984 BIL was the largest company in New Zealand by market capitalization, and in 1987 had 160,000 shareholders, with a stake in over 300 companies, including Paris department store Galleries Lafayette and Air New Zealand.In April 2021, Brierley pleaded guilty to three counts of possessing child abuse material and rescinded his 1988 knighthood after the government had initiated the process of having it removed.