Caretaker aims to stabilise battered Air NZ

By DANIEL RIORDAN aviation writer

A "details" man and just maybe the right custodian for a battered and bruised Air New Zealand - that's one view of Roger France, named on Tuesday as the national carrier's executive director.

Fronting his first Air NZ media conference yesterday, Mr France - in charge until a replacement for the recently departed chief executive, Gary Toomey, is found - was relaxed and confident, showing an obvious rapport with acting chairman Dr Jim Farmer.

He said it could be up to six months before a permanent replacement for Mr Toomey was found. Until then he would be tapping "a deep talent pool" within the company in his caretaker role and had no intention of being a micro-manager or even acting chief executive.

Mr France acknowledged his lack of airline experience, but said that after 37 years in business, he felt he could "assess threats and opportunities, how to identify issues that have the potential to be business-breakers, and how a successful business should be run".

He said the company remained "on the edge of the critical-care board".

His priorities were to bring a sense of stability and certainty to the airline, complete a new business plan to underpin the Government's $885 million rescue package, sort out the airline's strategy post-Ansett, and deal with its restructuring "as quickly and sensitively as we can".

The company is cutting up to 800 full-time positions - about half of them in management - from its workforce of 10,000, although Mr France said he didn't want to be held to that number.

He wanted to complete the restructuring by Christmas, but the pending changes announced so far "might not be the end of the process".

Job cuts and flight schedule reductions of 10.5 per cent were announced on Monday. Neither Mr France nor Mr Farmer elaborated on that yesterday, but they did announce a compressed management structure, with business units cut from 11 to seven.

Mr France said he would be working with people to see who fitted where.

That included managers brought to the airline by Mr Toomey - most of them from Qantas - some of whom "might not want to stay here".

Mr France said the interim board planned to meet every seven to 10 days.

So what kind of man is warming Air NZ's cockpit seat?

Fifty-six-year-old Mr France was born in Dunedin and educated at Christchurch's St Andrews College and Canterbury University.

He remains a one-eyed Cantabrian by all accounts, although he's lived in Auckland for 26 years.

His home is in Remuera, he has a house on Waiheke Island and is married with three adult children.

A keen yachtie like Dr Farmer, he was a trustee of Team New Zealand from 1993 until this year.

He is in his second stint on the stock exchange's market surveillance panel, he's chairman of Alan Gibbs' and Trevor Farmer's investment company Tappenden Holdings and was this year elected to the University of Auckland Council.

Most of his working life has been spent in PricewaterhouseCoopers and its various predecessor firms, although he had successive five-year stints from the mid-1970s as chief financial officer at Allied Farmers and Freightways.

He retired as managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers three months ago.

Fellow Air NZ director and former ASB Bank managing director Ralph Norris said Mr France was "a very seasoned executive - one of the finest professionals around the place".

One acquaintance said Mr France's serious demeanour was "enlivened with a mischievous sense of humour".

It's a view shared by his colleague of 15 years and PricewaterhouseCoopers partner John Shewan.

"Roger is the kind of person who'll sit quietly with a twinkle in his eye, and then come out with an absolute pearler."

Mr Shewan said Mr France was the consummate professional, combining leadership skills with a strong eye for detail.

One Auckland professional who knows Mr France well, described him as an able servant but not a leader - "and maybe that's exactly the right kind of person to have in this caretaker role".

He reckoned Mr France's job at Air NZ wasn't too far removed from that of a receiver - protecting the company's assets until a cornerstone shareholder came along.

Said another acquaintance: "Roger's a very good accountant who was used a lot by a coterie of businessman, who, until four or five years ago, basically ran New Zealand's corporate sector - people like Alan Gibbs and Doug Myers."

And why did Mr France take the Air NZ job?

In the words of one ex-colleague, "I've never yet seen Roger not accept a challenge put to him."

nzherald.co.nz/aviation

nzherald.co.nz/travel