Everyone needs a calculated risk account, says Rich List debutant Margaret Rose, who’s taken quite a few calculated risks through her life.
Margaret Rose has always loved the smell of a new building. She doesn’t mean fresh paint and carpets, she likes the smell of bricks and concrete; the promise of a new chapter.
“When we first started out, there weren’t a lot of women in property development,” she says in her Elizabeth Bay penthouse overlooking Sydney Harbour. “In those days, men were building all the houses but they had no idea about creating a home.”
At 79, Rose is making her debut on the Financial Review Rich List. Her husband, Bob, has appeared 11 times, most recently in 2018. But because in the past entries were restricted to one name – which had the unfortunate effect of overlooking the contributions made by women – Margaret is appearing alongside Bob for the first time in 2023.
Margaret Rose at her home in Elizabeth Bay. Louise Kennerley
She has played an integral role in building their $690 million fortune as co-founder of Rose Group. Indeed, it was a deal in the early 1980s in Sydney’s north shore orchestrated by Margaret that laid the foundations for their empire.
Bob had already made and lost a fortune by that stage, after his first property company collapsed and he was forced into bankruptcy. The pair had four children and Margaret had started her own public relations firm. Clients included Myer, Revlon and Australian Wool Corporation.
“I knew I didn’t want our life to be mediocre,” she says. “I had put aside some money from a Revlon event and I heard Bob, who was working for Mirvac at the time, talk about a block of land at McMahons Point that was for sale. He said a number of property developers were trying to convince the owner, an Irish company, to sell.”
Without telling Bob, Margaret approached the Australian representative of the company and convinced him to sell her a six-month option over the property.
“I offered $1000. He asked for $10,000 and we did the deal. I asked Bob to take me out to dinner that night and I passed the option across the table. He was dumbfounded. I said now you have to help me because I don’t have a clue where to go from here and I’ve only got six months.”
“I knew it was a turning point in my life,” says Margaret. “I got the architects in, put the plans through council and got the approval. And then I on-sold it with a few hours to spare before the option expired.”
That was 1982. The following year, Margaret and Bob set up Rosecorp – which was rebranded Rose in 2007 at the suggestion of their two sons, Bryan and Stuart, who had started working for the company.
What started as buying land and building houses mostly in Mosman turned into mega property deals, including the multibillion-dollar redevelopment of a former gasworks site at Breakfast Point on Sydney’s Parramatta River and the Catherine Hill Bay housing project south of Newcastle that finally got under way after years of local opposition and court battles.
While Bob was chief executive, Margaret was heavily involved in the business. Looking back on that formative property deal in McMahons Point, Margaret says the big lesson she took from it is that “everyone should have a calculated risk account” – money set aside to invest at short notice in a worthwhile but high-risk venture. She still has one to this day.
Margaret Rose says her most important role now with Rose Group is “chief listener”. Louise Kennerley
As we settle in over freshly brewed tea and chicken sandwiches, Margaret says her 60s were her best years.
The early years of the business were exciting but stressful and she spent seven years of her 50s battling ovarian cancer. It was the next decade when she really hit her stride. Her health was on track, both Margaret and Bob were made members of the Order of Australia in 2008 for service to the construction industry and their sons had started working in the company.
“The family was good. The business was going very well. All my energy and passion had come back. I was going to Harvard twice a year, meeting all these fantastic women, which I adored.”
At Harvard, she mentored female students from the Harvard Kennedy School, having been invited onto their Women’s Leadership Board in 2008. The Harvard connection came about after the family attended a week-long course there on succession planning. While their two sons were involved in the business, their daughters, Marisa and Sacha, were not.
“Bob and I had decided that we would give each child a percentage share in the business. And interestingly, the first thing the professor came in and said was, ‘you’re all probably thinking you have to treat your children equally when maybe you should treat them equitably.’ ”
Margaret and Bob Rose in 2006. Tanya Lake
After that session, they told the children that given Bryan and Stuart worked in the business, they would get a bigger share. “Well, they all went and had a discussion and got Sacha on the phone [she was pregnant and had stayed in Australia]. The boys came back and said we are a family, we don’t want to take more and would prefer that we are all equal. I was a very proud mother that day.”
In 2012, Bob and Margaret moved to London, where they rented in Mayfair, and bought an apartment on The World, the privately owned residential yacht that allows people to travel the globe, embarking and disembarking at will.
“We knew we had to extricate ourselves from the business to give the boys the opportunity to run it their way.”
They returned to Sydney in March 2020, selling their apartment on the ship just before the pandemic hit; another well-timed property deal.
They are still a key part of Rose Group. Bob is CEO and Margaret is a director. But she says her most important role now is “chief listener”.
“We had four children, but we actually had five. The company was our fifth child so you never let go of that.”
The Rich List issue of AFR Magazine is out on Friday, May 26 inside The Australian Financial Review. Follow AFR Mag on Twitter and Instagram.
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