When Hong Kong-based financier Michael Nock was looking for a place to escape to in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, he looked beyond the traditional havens of the rich to a land at the edge of the world, where cows outnumber people two-to-one. Nock, founder of hedge fund firm Doric Capital, bought a retreat 9,300km away in New Zealand’s picturesque resort town of Queenstown. In the seven years since then, terror threats in Europe and political uncertainty from Britain to the US have helped make the South Pacific nation a popular bolt hole for the megawealthy. Isolation has long been considered New Zealand’s Achilles heel. That remoteness is turning into an advantage, with hedge-fund pioneer Julian Robertson to Russian steel titan Alexander Abramov and Hollywood director James Cameron establishing multimillion-dollar hideaways in New Zealand’s countryside. "The thing that was always working against New Zealand — the tyranny of distance — is the very thing that becomes i...
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