New Zealand’s ‘One-Man’ Buyout Firm Hart Repackages Packaging

Graeme Hart went from high-school dropout to become richer than anyone in Australia or New Zealand by buying up and repackaging underperforming businesses. Now he’s doing it to the packaging industry.

This week’s $4.5 billion agreement to buy Pactiv Corp. and combine the maker of Hefty trash bags with his Reynolds Group Holdings Ltd. is his biggest gamble to date in a career that has taken him from tow-truck driver to the world’s second-largest maker of drink cartons, trailing only Sweden’s Tetra Laval SA.