Rob Alloway reckons he and Allied Farmers have reason to feel confident they can recover Hanover's loans better than existing management. Photo / Dean Purcell

Rob Alloway reckons he and Allied Farmers have reason to feel confident they can recover Hanover's loans better than existing management. Photo / Dean Purcell

Allied Farmer's new managing director Rob Alloway - the man driving his firm's audacious $400 million debt-for-equity deal with Hanover and its debenture investors - accepts he's not a particularly well-known figure.

But that, he says, is not a bad thing.

"In the finance industry, most of the people who are familiar are infamous aren't they?"

With clamorous condemnation of the deal, even before the details are fully understood, there have been more calls for Hanover to be placed in receivership or even statutory management.

While some of that is driven by antipathy toward Hanover's owners Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson, Alloway himself appears to be cut from different, less flashy cloth.

He began his career as an electrician in the 1980s, going on to work in the Waikato dairy industry for the next decade or so.

He formed his own business distributing General Electric products in the 90s and by the turn of the century had offices in Hamilton, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

He sold out in 2001 and after a year of farming, joined Fonterra, initially managing automation and process control functions, and than as the dairy giant's national capital projects manager.

In 2006 he became chief executive of engineering business NDA. The company was sold to private equity with Alloway leading a management group that acquired a 20 per cent stake in the same transaction.

Staying on as chief executive he led the company as it conducted a series of acquisitions in China, the US, Australia and New Zealand where it is now one of the largest local engineering groups. He left the company a year ago but remains a major shareholder.

Nowadays, he describes himself as a professional investor.

Having paid several million dollars for a 15 per cent stake in Allied Farmers this year, he became managing director a couple of months back, but is not drawing a salary. Instead he is working to ensure his investment in the company pays off.

Why buy into a wobbly company like Allied? Firstly, he says, it's because he loves the rural environment and community and therefore Allied's rural services business.

"It's been around for more than 100 years and is here to stay."

Allied's finance division is more of problem, but he clearly sees it as great opportunity too.