The Director: On Board

John Judge has been appointed chairman of the ANZ National Bank. He replaced Sir Dryden Spring who stepped down last month. And while on the subject of banking industry directorships, Jane Freeman, Pumpkin Patch chair and Delegat’s Group board member, has been appointed to the ASB board. Two other new ASB directors were appointed at the same time: Rob Jesudason who is Group Head of Strategy for the bank’s parent company, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Michael Coomer, global financial services and IT specialist. The new ASB appointments followed the departure of Ian Narev to his new job as CEO of ASB’s parent company, and Solid Energy CEO Don Elder who stepped down after seven years on the ASB board.
Departed NZX CEO Mark Weldon is steadily picking up directorships including one to the board of governance software maker Diligent. Diligent, which is reportedly poised to enter the US, European and Asian markets, thinks Weldon’s experience will be useful to the company as it expands the business offshore.
And Auckland-based Family Law Results thinks it has delivered governance first by setting up an advisory board for legal firm. Advisory boards are, says the specialist family law firm, becoming increasingly popular with small to medium enterprises as an alternative to more traditional boards of directors. They are less expensive, less formal and more in tune with what SMEs need and can afford, say the little league legal eagles.
Palmerston North-based commercialisation centre BCC has appointed former Labour Cabinet Minister and now Massey University Vice Chancellor Steve Maharey, and company director Vicki Stewart, to the board of the eight-year-old company. BCC owner, the Bio Commerce Centre Trust, represents the key research, business, local government and iwi stakeholders and appoints skills-based board to govern the enterprise.
Richard Collyer has been appointed director of the New Zealand office of global strategic communications partnership Kreab Gavin Anderson. Collyer previously led the communications and public relations for the multi-billion-dollar spending Queensland Reconstruction Authority.
Auckland-based director Gary Sturgess (pictured) has been re-elected chairman by the board of the New Zealand Institute of Management. His new deputy chair is Dan Coward, the Canterbury Area Commander of the New Zealand Fire Service, currently seconded to the Christchurch earthquake recovery organisation, CERA. Coward was finalist in the 2009 NZIM/Eagle Technology Young Executive of the Year Top 200 Award.