Baldy

Often seen in: Indonesia / New Zealand
Profession: Philanthropy (Youth Sports)
Reports on: Indonesia, Finance & Investing

Summary: Originally from New Zealand, “Baldy” has lived in Indonesia for the better part of four decades. He is an accomplished athlete, entrepreneur and investor who now spends much of his time on his philanthropic foundation, which aims to bring well-managed sports programs to Indonesian youth.

Fun Fact: Originally came to Indonesia in 1975 as a Christian missionary.

More About Baldy:

Baldy, who was born in New Zealand in 1955, dropped out of high school to pursue a cricket career in Christchurch. In the summer of 1973, he had a “burning bush” experience and joined a Christian religious group. In November of 1975, he went to to Indonesia as a missionary. Baldy was married in 1978 and has 3 boys. He left the “closed world of religious self-righteous pursuit” in 1988 to embark on an entrepreneurial career.

Business Experience: (in Baldy’s own words)

With a couple of other disgruntled religious mates we set up a translating company in Jakarta and soon became the leading translating service in Indonesia. The deregulation of the banking system, opening of the Jakarta Stock Exchange and a flood of overseas money meant times were good.

We translated almost all the IPO prospectuses for the JSE and were happy campers. In 1992, we started an education Foundation to provide language training to joint venture companies and within a short time we were busy, happy campers.

In early 1998, my wife and I had 3 homes, a bit of savings off shore and we’d be millionaires by 2000. Bang – the Asian currency crisis all but wiped us out. The value of our Indonesian property dropped by more than 80% and with no liquidity had we needed to sell, the actual price would have been much less.

However, our physical gold and off shore savings meant we could retire the mortgage debt without losing any assets. Our paper gold disappeared – poof. No one would pay USD for translating or language services so income crashed. In 1999, I decided to quit Jakarta and went to build our cabin in the foothills one hour south of Jakarta.

In late 2000, I met [investment guru] Jim Rogers in Jakarta on his round the world trip and decided to purchase more farm land around the cabin after talking to him. We now have almost 10 hectares of magnificent real estate.

Since 2000 I’ve been setting up a sports’ foundation to get well managed sports programs to Indonesian schools.