Ian Wall, the little-known 90-year-old philanthropist from Adelaide with a $600m fortune

The co-founder of Adelaide manufacturing technology success story Codan is still the company’s biggest shareholder – and his wealth has tripled in a year.

Pam and Ian Wall (right), with ‘Captain Starlight’ and Mark Watson at a charity event in 2016.

Meet the 90-year-old from Adelaide suddenly sitting on a $600 million fortune.

Ian Wall is the biggest shareholder in ASX-listed Codan, which makes high frequency radios, gold metal detectors, mining and defence industry equipment, and is a legend at a company that will fete him at a function on Friday that will be attended by 200 people.

While Wall stepped down from the Codan board in 2009 he maintains his 19% stake in the firm he co-founded back in the 1950s and helped build it into what is a quiet Australian manufacturing and exporting success story.

Wall is an original version of Atlassian billionaire duo Mike Cannon Brookes and Scott Farquhar, who famously started their software firm after meeting in class at the University of NSW.

Wall and two mates from St Mark’s College at the University of Adelaide in Alastair Wood and Jim Bettison started Codan in 1959 to tackle some challenges in electronics engineering as the Electronics, Instrument and Lighting Company Limited (EILCO).

And like the Atlassian duo Wall is not terribly concerned about the current value of his stock, noting that he has hung on to his shares and added to his stake from time to time.

“They seem to be paying good dividends, why would you want to get rid of them,” he deadpans to The Australian.

Codan hit an all-time record high during morning trading on Thursday and has trebled in value in 12 months to give it market capitalisation of about $3.2bn.

Wall’s stake is worth about $640m and if The List – Australia’s Richest 250, published by The Australian in March, was recalculated this week he would place inside the top 200.

But Wall says he is more concerned about making sure he and wife Pamela keep contributing to their numerous philanthropic interests, which has seen them awarded an Order of Australia and a Medal of the Order of Australia respectively in recent years. Among the organisations they have supported are St Mark’s College, the South Australian Liberal Party, the National Trust, the Starlight Children’s Foundation, a Covid research study at the University of Adelaide and other Adelaide health outfits.

Wall says he is making more arrangements shortly to ensure charities are big beneficiaries of his shareholdings.

Wall says he and Pamela always made sure to attend Codan’s annual general meetings pre-Covid and while he follows the company’s progress as closely as he can he is well aware he can’t have too many advantages as the major shareholder.

“They haven’t forgotten I exist but of course I am constrained in not being able to have conversations with management, as if they were to tell me something about what they were doing we might get caught for insider trading.”

Ian Wall is now worth an estimated $600 million.

Still, Codan chief executive Donald McGurk says Wall epitomises the strong culture that he helped build at Codan.

“He is a man with strong integrity, extremely sharp witted, humble and generous of spirit. Codan owe Ian a great debt of gratitude for laying the strong foundations upon which the company’s success has been built during his 50 years of dedicated and passionate service.”

Wall is proud of his legacy at Codan, and chuckles that helped found the company while working at his “day job” at electronics business Philips, where he helped design televisions.

He had a verbal agreement with his boss there to keep working at his “night job” with his uni mates as long as it didn’t interfere and he didn’t use any information. “No pieces or paper, no lawyers, just two people agreeing that they would do certain things. Business is not carried on like that these days.”

But that night job would eventually become too busy and as what would become Codan grew, the business had a breakthrough when it won a tender to provide new radio equipment for all the flying doctor base stations across Australia.

“That job was very significant to us,” says Wall. “It was of a magnitude that we started to make money. It was a breakthrough moment for us, because there was quite a lot of money received and we were able to do a better job of what we were doing.”

Further milestones would follow, including providing equipment to help launch Australia’s first domestic satellite system and the United Nations buying Codan’s high frequency radio equipment to use in peacekeeping missions in Africa. More recently it has made acquisitions such as US firm Domo Tactical Communications, that supplies technology to government and military agencies.

Codan would also develop metal detectors used for finding gold and later for minesweeping efforts in countries ravaged by war, and its products proved popular.

“We followed the Philips philosophy in a way. Their aim was don‘t worry about being first in the market; all you need to do is make sure your product is superior to everyone else’s. It works, I tell you,” Wall says.

Codan would go on to float on the ASX in 2003, raising about $30m for an initial valuation of almost $180m. Wall retired from his executive position a year later but stayed on the board for another 15 years – and always kept his shares.

“I can remember we had shares at 65c at one period of time. I had quite a few of them but I never sold them, and built on them. I don’t need any more, but they have done well. And they continue to do well.”