Things you may or may not know about Nick…

The same year Nick was born, John Lennon said, “We [The Beatles] are more popular than Jesus.” Controversially in our household, Nick does NOT like The Beatles.

In March 1966, the first episode of Country Calendar, a 15-minute news show for farmers in New Zealand, first aired. Still on the air, it is believed to be the second-longest-running television series in the world, after Coronation Street.

When Nick was born, there was one television signal available in Hamilton, New Zealand: a relay of the Auckland station AKTV2, which broadcast from 2pm until 10pm. However, the Grace family only received their first television when Nick was 10. It was a used black-and-white TV from one of his father’s clients who had passed away and left it to them.

In 1972, when Nick was six, the first live telecast of a rugby match was aired in New Zealand. It was the third test between New Zealand and Australia at Eden Park. New Zealand won 38–3. (Nick’s family did not yet have a television set, so he did not watch this.)

In the 1970s, New Zealand children spent hours on outdoor, high-energy games, including Bullrush, Tiggy, Four Square and Elastics.

When Nick was six, his parents embarked upon a seven-week world tour as part of his role as New Zealand President of the Trusteebanks Association, leaving their seven children at home under the care of a nanny. After going through two nannies who were variously bitten, thrown in the pool, and generally treated horribly, the third nanny, Mrs Shalfoon, was the one who stuck. All the children and Mrs Shalfoon were thrilled when Jim and Jan returned from their travels

Nick grew up with large rhododendron trees in his family’s garden. When he got into trouble, he would climb the trees to hide. Though not native to New Zealand, since being introduced by early European settlers, the country has developed a rich history of breeding and cultivating unique rhododendron hybrids.

As a teenager, Nick was selected to spend 10 days sailing on the Spirit of Adventure, a 42.5-metre steel-hulled, three-masted barquentine commissioned in 1986 for youth development. He remembers being cold and wet and almost losing both of his index fingers.

In 1976, when Nick was 10, the All Blacks toured South Africa in defiance of a United Nations call for a sporting embargo of the republic.

As a child, Nick suffered from terrible asthma. His father, a lawyer, thought rugby would help his lungs develop. His mother, a nurse, disagreed. Regardless, Nick started playing rugby at age six and would wheeze his way through the matches while his mother watched, tearful and anxious, from the sidelines.

In 1981, when Nick was 15, New Zealand saw some of its worst civil unrest related to the Springbok tour. As a rugby-crazed teenager, Nick sided with the New Zealand prime minister, Robert Muldoon, who argued, “Politics should stay out of sport.” Nick’s father disagreed and forbade him from going to the matches. Nick went to the 25 July match in Hamilton anyway; however, it was cancelled after a stolen plane was headed to the stadium while protestors invaded the pitch.

In 1987, the same year Nick graduated from Waikato University in Hamilton, NZ, New Zealand won the first-ever Rugby World Cup.

From 1984–1988 New Zealand Finance Minister Roger Douglas introduced neo-liberal economic reforms to the country. “Rogernomics” transformed a heavily regulated economy into a market-led one through floating the dollar, removing subsidies, reducing top tax rates, and privatising state assets. The New Zealand stock market soared.

When he was 16, armed with the money he earned working at a bottle shop, Nick made his first stock market investment, buying shares in the New Zealand conglomerate Rainbow Corp.

Nick graduated from St John’s College in Hamilton when he was 17. He had been deputy head boy and recalls having “very good grades.”

In 1984, Nick spent the summer working at the Motunui synthetic gasoline plant near New Plymouth (NZ), testing the joints inside the pipes being installed.

By mid-1987, with a record of 309 companies listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange, more than 40% of New Zealand’s adult population owned shares, compared to just 20% of Britons during the same period

When Nick was 21, he convinced his younger sister’s boyfriend, Greg (now brother-in-law), to co-invest in futures with him. They sold just before Nick and Greg owed money. As a result, Greg had to sell a cow to buy Gerry an engagement ring rather than use the promised riches from investing with Nick.

During his time at university, Nick actively invested in the New Zealand stock market, which had gone up over sixfold since he started investing in high school. By 1987, Nick’s portfolio was worth approximately NZ$100,000 (~£38,000 then/~£140,000 today), and his mother suggested he sell to help fund his planned gap year after graduating. Nick explained to his mother that she knew nothing about stocks. After the stock market crash in October of that year, Nick’s portfolio was reduced to NZ$1,000.

In 1988, Nick left New Zealand with his friend Mike Vile to travel around China. With only NZ$1,000 saved, they budgeted $5 per day for living expenses

University education was fully funded by the government in New Zealand until 1989.

As Nick started at Waikato University, its student newspaper, The Nexus, wrote: “Many of the other universities in the country adopted political themes such as Big Brother or Nuclear War for their Orientation celebrations; Waikato University wallowed in six days of sheer hedonism – an orgy of music, dancing and booze.” As Nick lived at home with his parents, it is unclear how much of that hedonism he participated in.

One of the top hits in New Zealand while Nick was at university was “Slice of Heaven” by Dave Dobbyn and the band Herbs. It didn’t receive much airtime or chart in the US or the UK but was reported as a “massive” hit on the student radio station in Madison, Wisconsin (where Nick attended graduate school) with the story reported as: “Somebody brought it back from Sydney and handed it to the radio station, and they’ve just been playing it endlessly.”

In the 1980s, Hamilton, New Zealand – where Nick was studying at the University of Waikato – had a vibrant nightlife, with the main clubs being Candyo’s, Shakes, and the Hilly.  Nick preferred to go to the pub and bring his own bottle of sherry to pour into his glass to save money.

China competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary sent 13 competitors and won no medals; New Zealand sent 9 competitors.

Nick spent two months in China in 1988 on $5 per day, learning how to trade currency on the black market without getting arrested. At the time, the average per/capital income was less than $200/year and there were frequent runs on banks due to high levels of inflation.

Nick’s travels around China included Guangzhou, Guilin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Beijing, and Hohhot (Inner Mongolia).

In 1988, 1.77M international tourists visted China, primarily from the US, UK and Germany. Frequently he and his friend Mike were the only gweilos where they visited.

Today, 82M international tourists visit China every year.

After two months in China, Nick and his friend Mike Vile travelled to India in the spring of 1988. Intending to spend two months travelling around the country, they cut their journey halfway through, having both fallen horribly ill while staying on a houseboat in Kashmir.

The summer of 1988 in London has been called the “Second Summer of Love’ for the explosion acid house music, club culture and unlicensed rave parties.

Upon first arriving in London in June 1988, Nick lived with his Aunt Polly in Sudbury, near Wembley, for a month before moving to Hounslow.

In the summer of 1988, Nick found a job as an accountant at the advertising agency WPP, though he was primarily responsible for making photocopies.

The top shows in the US in 1988-90 were Baywatch and Melrose Place, along with Cheers, Twin Peaks, and the newly launched Seinfeld.

In November 1988, Nick moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to start his MBA. The temperature stayed below freezing for the next four months, and the snow regularly was over a metre deep; Nick had failed to pack a winter coat for this move.

While Nick was studying for his MBA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the school’s football team, the Badgers, had an abysmal season with an overall record of 2–9, placing them ninth in the Big Ten Conference.

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is located on Lake Mendota. The lake freezes over in the winter and this is where Nick first discovered the sport of ice fishing, though he did not participate.

Rather than a summer internship during his MBA, Nick spent the summer of 1989 travelling around Israel, Egypt, and Turkey.

In 1990, David Dinkins was the mayor of New York City, the subway cost $1.50 a ride, and a slice of pizza cost $1.00.

In June 1990, Nick started as an analyst at JP Morgan. It was there that his boss and long-suffering mentor, Susan Ulik, ensured he learned how to properly model companies, work until the work was finished, and not buy a brown suit, even if it was on a really fantastic sale at Bergdorf Goodman,.

Fresh out of business school, Nick worked as a mining analyst at JP Morgan, which put him up for seven months in the Shelborne Hotel at 37th & Lexington. The Shelborne is famous for hosting Fidel Castro in 1960 when he was in town to address the United Nations.

Amid a deep economic recession, Nick accepted a significant pay cut to stay employed, moving to Melbourne, Australia, in 1991 as JP Morgan’s local mining analyst.

Nick is actually ½ Australian, something he concealed while living in Melbourne. His mother grew up in the apple-growing region of Batlow, New South Wales, before moving to New Zealand in her twenties.

Nick is descended from Danish Jews on his father’s side. Danish King Frederick II encouraged Sephardic Jewish migration in the mid-1600s to help the economy, and since 1800 the Jewish population of Denmark has been between 0.2–0.3% of the total population.

Looking to leave Australia and JP Morgan, Nick interviewed with Capital Group in 1993, convincing them they should hire him to work in one of their Asian offices, where he could create an expansive network of key commodity buyers. While Capital liked this idea, when he was nearly arrested at the North Korean border while visiting a contact at a smelting plant there, they thought perhaps he had taken his mission a bit too far.

In November 1993, as the European Union was formally established, Nick moved to Los Angeles to begin his career at Capital Group.

When Nick moved to LA in 1993, he lived in Manhattan Beach, slept on a futon, and went surfing every morning (or so he says…).

During the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Nick still went into the office in his second-hand Honda, thrilled to find the roads free of traffic. Upon arriving at the office and climbing the 14 flights of stairs to his desk (the lifts were out of service), he was promptly discovered by security and sent home

Nick married on New Year’s Day 1994 in New Zealand and, after the celebrations, moved to Tokyo to continue his work as a mining analyst at Capital Group

From 1995–1998, Nick lived in the Gotanda neighbourhood of Tokyo, commuting 30 minutes to the Capital Group offices on the Yamanote Line

In 1996 Tokyo, there was a thriving gaming scene; it was the peak of ’90s fashion trends like gyaru and Shibuya-kei; and Nick welcomed his first child, Emma, into the world

That same year, while Nick was living in Tokyo, the New Zealand band OMC had their smash hit “How Bizarre.”

Tokyo is Nick’s favourite city, although he found it difficult living there and not speaking the language. Nevertheless, he loves the food, the architecture, and the people.

With his second child, Liam, on the way, Nick moved from Tokyo to Los Angeles and then to London in 1998.

In 1998, Nick and his young family moved to London and Geri Halliwell announced she was leaving the Spice Girls.

When Nick and his family moved to London, there was no Mayor of London. A referendum in May of that year established the office, and in May 2000 Ken Livingstone, the first Mayor of London, was elected.

In 1998, having moved to London and ignoring the stock market volatility related to his new software coverage at Capital Group, Nick was determined to take advantage of mortgage rates that had dropped from 7.25% to 6.9% and went house shopping in Chiswick.

Nick first learned to ski in 1999 in Auerbach, Austria, during a year of record-breaking snow. Ski helmets and their necessity were a hotly debated topic.

In August 2000, while Los Angeles hosted the Democratic National Convention nominating Al Gore as its presidential candidate, Nick welcomed his third child, Dillon, into the world at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

In September 2002, Nick welcomed twins Ryan and Kyle into his growing family. Less than 0.4% of babies born are identical twins, and fewer than 2.5% of families in the UK have five children or more.

One of Nick’s favourite things to do in London is visit the Rhododendron Dell at Kew Gardens when the trees are in bloom. They remind him of his childhood and of walks through Kew with his parents when they would visit him in London. Rhododendrons were introduced to the UK from Gibraltar in 1763. However, the rhododendrons at Kew originate from Sir Joseph Hooker’s 1848–1849 Himalayan expedition. Many of the original plants from the 25 new species he acquired during that trip are still flourishing at Kew today

In 2009, Nick visited Nantucket, fell in love (with the island), and bought the house he returns to every summer.

New Zealand and Nantucket share deep historic ties stemming from the 19th-century whaling industry, when Nantucket whaleships such as the Ploughboy (1837) and Lexington (1850s) frequently docked in the Bay of Islands for supplies and to hire crew.

New Zealand consistently ranks among the world's top nations for elite sporting success per capita, particularly rugby and also in Olympic sports like rowing, cycling, and sailing.

In 2016, when Nick’s sixth and seventh children, Daniel and Jessica, were born, the All Blacks went undefeated at the Rugby Championship (formerly the Tri Nations Series), claiming bonus points in each match. This followed on from their 2015 win at the Rugby World Cup

New Zealand sent its largest-ever Winter Olympic team of 17 athletes to the Milano Cortina 2026 Games, winning three medals. This placed it 10th in terms of medals per capita and made it the only Southern Hemisphere country in the top 10.

On Nick’s 54th birthday, 15 March 2020, the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero to support the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nick’s birthday, 15 March, is also World Consumer Rights Day; National Day in Hungary, which marks the Hungarian Revolution of 1848; the date of Nicholas II’s abdication in Russia; and Belarus Constitution Day.

Chocolate arrived in Europe from the Americas around 1544; coffee came from the Ottoman via Venetian merchants around 1615. Both remained relatively obscure luxury items until the mid-17th century when they gained widespread popularity. They are two of Nick’s favourite things.

Nick loves dark chocolate, ideally over 75%. While chocolate originates in ancient Mesoamerica, it first arrived in Europe in the 1600s, and the first solid chocolate bar was created in 1847.

Every morning while he is in London, Nick visits his favourite coffee shop, Heisenberg Coffee Co., with either his daughter Jessica or his friend Mike, Jessica’s godfather (or both of them). The shop is themed around Breaking Bad, which Nick has never seen