Sir Bryan James Todd (8 September 1902 – 29 May 1987) was one of four brothers who built one of New Zealand's biggest industrial and commercial enterprises. He was an important figure in the development of the New Zealand oil and gas energy industry and, incidentally, in the development of New Zealand tax law. Early life Todd was born in Heriot, Otago in 1902. His grandfather was Charles Todd (1834–1892), a Scottish immigrant who had arrived in New Zealand with his wife, Mary O'Sullivan, in 1870. Charles worked at wool-scouring in Milton and gold-mining at Table Hill, Blue Spur and then Bendigo, all in Otago. In 1884, Charles commenced a fellmongery business at Heriot, Otago. The Todd Group was commenced in Heriot when Bryan Todd's father, also named Charles Todd (1868-1942), from 1888 expanded the fellmongery into a successful stock and station business. He imported the district's first car in 1908 and in 1913 established a garage which later expanded into the Todd Motor Company. Bryan Todd commenced his primary education at the local Heriot School. In February 1915 Charles Todd, his wife Mary Hegarty and their seven children (Charles Patrick (CP), Desmond, Kathleen, Moyra, Bryan, Andrew and Sheila) shifted to Dunedin where Bryan Todd attended the Christian Brothers School. When he was older he was sent to Sydney to board at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview. Business By the 1920s three of Charles' four sons, Desmond, Bryan and Andrew, were running branches of the Todd Motor Company in Dunedin, Christchurch and Auckland, By 1934 Andrew Todd had moved to Wellington to run a new Petone plant assembling Hillman and Humber cars and commercial vehicles. The Mitsubishi franchise was acquired in 1970 when planning for New Zealand's biggest assembly plant was under way, and in 1975 Todd Park was opened at Porirua. Bryan Todd set the scene for the group's later diversification into a range of interests – which included oil distribution, refining, and exploration, natural gas, forestry, finance, aviation, ironsands export, and land and property development – when a 1929 Petrol price war in Christchurch saw supplies cut off to the Todd garages because the petrol companies were setting up their own tied garages selling only their own petroleum products. Bryan Todd decided expanding world sources had created an opportunity for a fourth company to market petroleum products in New Zealand. In August 1931 the Associated Motorists' Petrol Company (AMPCO)