iTWire - New CFO for Telecom New Zealand

IT NEWS Sustainability Get JOB ALERTS that match your skills

New CFO for Telecom New Zealand

by Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
! Telecom New Zealand has name Russ Houlden as its chief financial officer, effective from 10 April 2008. He will be based in Auckland and will lead finance teams in New Zealand and Australia. Related stories Telstra's CDMA closure: a headache for the Kiwis Telecom NZ unveils $NZ1.4 billion broadband plan Telecom New Zealand to do the splits BT executive to head Telecom New Zealand Telecom NZ sells Yellow Pages for$NZ2.24 billion Most popular skills tags .NET Active Directory C# Cisco Development HTML Infrastructure Management Network Oracle Project Management SAP SDLC SQL Server Support Sybase TCP/IP Unix VB.NET Web Services/SOAP XML He replaces Marko Bogoievski who left earlier this year to become COO of NZX-listed investment company Infratil after being passed over in 2007 to replace Teresa Gattung as CEO. Houlden has extensive experience working in senior international financial leadership roles, including time at BT. From 2002 until 2008 he was finance director at commercial law firm Lovells, one of the largest international business legal practices, with over three thousand people operating from 26 offices in Europe, Asia and the United States. Previously he worked for BT, as finance director of BT Wholesale - a group with 30,000 staff and capital expenditure of around two billion pounds annually, and for ICI in Europe and Japan. Telecom NZ CEO Paul Reynolds (who was head of BT Wholesale before joining Telecom NZ in 2007) said Houlden's considerable industry transformation experience and international perspectives would be a tremendous asset for Telecom New Zealand in the era of operational separation. (Today 1 April 2008 marks the start of Telecom NZ's operation under a regime of operational separation required by the Government). "We are very fortunate to get someone of Russ' calibre. He has played key roles at the heart of successful transformations in the telecommunications, chemicals and commercial law industries and has very broad international experience. That will benefit Telecom New Zealand as we embrace a new era of innovation, transparency, operational separation and increased competition." Houlden said he had followed Telecom New Zealand's recent progress with great interest. "Telecom New Zealand faces many opportunities and challenges as a result of volume growth, communications convergence, competition and operational separation. I am keen to help to steer the group's transformation for the benefit of customers and shareholders." Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment! Tags See All Tags Appointments Stuart Corner Telecom New Zealand Get stories like this delivered daily - FREE - subscribe now