Vital Statistics
Name: Mark Bouris
Job Title: Chairman of Wizard Home Loans
Age: 51
Grew up: Punchbowl, Western Sydney
Lives: Sydney
Family: Divorced with four sons
Education: Bachelor of Commerce & Master of Commerce and Law at University of NSW
Before Wizard: Worked as a chartered accountant at PN Burke & Co before forming Bouris Dowd and Vice. Then spent seven years with law firm Simon & Baffsky, which led to property development work with Citistate.
Other Chairman Positions: Chairman of AIG, principal of investment bank BBB Capital, chairman of Yellow Brick Road financial planning, and chairman of boutique property developer Ashington Group.
Mark Bouris - Wealth Wizard
Mark Bouris has made the $100m Club five times over. But as Joanne McCulloch finds, he feels his biggest success is yet to come.
Mark Bouris - Wealth Wizard
Mark Bouris has made the $100m Club five times over. But as Joanne McCulloch finds, he feels his biggest success is yet to come. Mark Bouris set up Wizard Home Loans from scratch and turned it into a $500m business within 10 years. He did this in a market that was dominated by the big banks and without any previous experience in the home loans sector.
Along the way he raised $16bn worth of funds, turned Wizard into the biggest non-bank lender in the country and eventually facilitated its sale to General Electric in 2004 for more than $520m.
So naturally, when Bouris says Wizard’s success had little to do with him, I’m a little sceptical.
“In some respects we were pretty lucky,” he says. “We were in what I call a rising tide - like a king tide. I did not know there was going to be the structural change in prices or a macroeconomic surge in mortgages.
“All of a sudden people could afford to buy real estate and in addition to that, you had all the banks and lenders reducing margins, so it became even more affordable for people. Then house prices started to go up, so not only were we lending to more people, but larger amounts - it was a double-whammy. It’s one of those few times in your business life that that opportunity arises. I couldn’t have predicted that and it had nothing to do with me.”
Read the full article in the current issue of Wealth Creator with Mark Bouris on the front cover. Out Now!
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