Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck (right) met King Charles III last year and has now been knighted in the King's Birthday honours.
Three corporate titans have been honoured in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours list, issued by the National-led coalition Government.
Former Telecom chief executive Theresa Gattung, high-profile company director Joan Withers and Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck have been given titular honours.
The appointment of a trio of businesspeople among the four new knights and dames is in stark contrast to the prior year’s list when, of the seven people given titles, the only business leader was company director Jo Brosnahan.
And in 2022, of the six New Zealanders who received titular honours in the Queen’s Birthday and Platinum Jubilee honours list, only lawyer Hugh Rennie QC (now KC) had filled a high-profile role in the corporate world – he was knighted for his contributions to business as well as to governance, the law and the community.
Other key businesspeople honoured in this year’s King’s Birthday list include former Queenstown mayor Jim Boult and Briscoe Group managing director Rod Duke – both made companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit – Perpetual Guardians founder Andrew Barnes, who is made an officer, and Spark chief executive Jolie Hodson, who becomes a member of the order.
Boult has had executive experience in various tourism positions, including CEO of Christchurch International Airport.
Duke is honoured for his services to philanthropy and business, with the Government acknowledging his contribution to healthcare research and youth suicide prevention. Groups who have received his philanthropic support include the Westpac Rescue Helicopter, St John Ambulance and Bayswater School on Auckland’s North Shore.
Barnes is honoured for his contributions to business and philanthropy, including his advocacy of the reduced work hour philosophy, better known as the four-day week. He has reshaped the trustee sector in New Zealand, consolidating Perpetual Guardian as the largest trustee company and largest non-government philanthropy entity in the country.
As well as being chief executive of Spark, Hodson co-founded On Being Bold to inspire women in business and was the convenor of the Climate Leaders Coalition in 2022.
Fisher & Paykel Appliances apprentice turned self-taught rocket scientist Peter Beck staged his first serious launch from Great Mercury Island, off the east coast of the Coromandel, in 2009.
“Ātea-1″ looked like an overgrown firework and the Rocket Lab founder had to enlist local boaties to help search for it after splash-down. But it reached an altitude of 150km, or 50km above the Karman line that separates Earth from space, a Southern Hemisphere first for a private company.
The youngster’s innovative use of propellant, among other smarts, caught the attention of US government agency Darpa (the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, an outfit that has helped keep the US military ahead of the play but, as Beck has pointed out, also delivered dual-use technologies we all use every day, from the internet to GPS).
Others soon backed Beck, from Sir Stephen Tindall to ACC’s investment arm to a clutch of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
Fast forward to 2024 and Rocket Lab (Nasdaq market cap: US$2.2 billion) is the second-busiest private rocket launch outfit on the planet – and the only serious competition to Elon Musk’s SpaceX – as it launches its Electron Rocket with increasing frequency from two launchpads at Mahia and a new facility at Wallops Island in Virginia, United States.
Its growing space systems business put Nasa’s Capstone satellite on track to the moon, and will design and build two spacecraft that will orbit Mars for Nasa in 2025, while a third – an inhouse Beck passion project – will pierce Venus’ atmosphere the same year on a research mission.
And Rocket Lab’s giant, crew-capable Neutron rocket is due for its first test flight from Virginia next year – cementing the Invercargill-raised Beck’s position at the aerospace industry’s top table.
His firm now employs 1800, including 750 in New Zealand, and continues to grow at pace. It recently opened a high-tech plant in Auckland to make reaction wheels, which orientate satellites. And in October, Beck’s firm bought SailGP’s Warkworth plant, taking on its 50 staff and redeploying them from making yachts to carbon composite components for rockets.
In June last year, Beck was at Buckingham Palace to join King Charles III in the launch the “Astra Carta” – a set of sustainability principles aimed at private space operators.
Satellites launched by Rocket Lab are tracking methane emissions and preparing for a space junk cleanup.
But Beck’s thoughts were more down to Earth when he spoke to the Herald about his knighthood.
“It’s a huge, humbling honour to get,“ he told the Herald from Rocket Lab’s facility at Long Beach, California (where his firm added to its already huge facility by taking over Sir Richard Branson’s neighbouring Virgin Orbit manufacturing facility after it went bust in May last year). He had just returned from several days at Nasa’s giant Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi, where Rocket Lab has leased a 93,000sq m to test the Archimedes engine that will power the 43m-tall Neutron as it delivers a 13-tonne payload into orbit (for contrast, the Electron can carry about 350kg).
“I certainly hope that engineers and entrepreneurs in New Zealand also take this as a win. Hopefully it’s inspirational.”
Beck - who will stick with simply “Peter”, day-to-day - has already been trying to make it easier for others to follow in his footsteps. As a member of a business council advising the Government, he’s helped usher in reforms that have boosted the local venture capital industry.
Education and training are other points of focus.
“We [Rocket Lab] have our scholarship programmes where we provide funding for university students. We also have our intern programmes. Our intern intake this year is enormous, both in NZ and in the US, and we have our apprenticeship programmes in NZ,” he said.
The hard-driving founder sees a “lost generation” of school leavers with the decline of trades-training programmes, and he stresses that “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist” to gain a Rocket Lab apprenticeship. He said as the programme was launched, “what we build here are basically aircraft, so the majority of people on the floor are aircraft technicians. So we’re looking for aircraft technicians and composite technicians and laminators – really a lot of jobs in the trade”.
Beck said: “More directly, it’s about getting alongside entrepreneurs. I sit on the investment committee of Outset Ventures [an Auckland-based venture capital firm] and get to see the earliest-stage deep tech companies and then having the opportunity and the ability to back some of those entrepreneurs personally, which has been a great thrill.”
Via Outset, Beck has put millions of dollars into Kiwi startups including Heartlab (now gaining traction with its AI system for analysing cardio scans) and Astrix, which is developing new, more power-efficient solar power for small satellites, as well as providing mentorship and, in Astrix’s case, an office and testing space. Rocket Lab’s huge presence has also helped create an ecosystem of smaller aerospace companies around New Zealand.
“The plan was always to go to university,” Beck said.
He never got there, at least as an undergrad.
And he wouldn’t change anything. “I live life without regret,” he said.
“I did a trade and F&P put me in a design office and I was lucky to also go to Industrial Research [a precursor to Callaghan Innovation] where I got to get involved in some pretty serious projects.”
And he did eventually make it onto campus.
“Auckland University gave me an honorary professorship which was incredible [he was made an Adjunct Professor in Aerospace Engineering in 2019] and I get to give back at the university in that sense. Maybe I’ll pick up some classes when I retire.”
With the first Neutron under construction, and the jaunts to Mars and Venus to be planned, that won’t be any decade soon.
Gattung, speaking from her Bay of Plenty home-away-from-home, said she was thrilled to be honoured, describing it as “like an out-breath”.
“You know when you are racing along, and you feel like you are living your life in the in-breath, going on to one thing and the next thing, well, this is like a very long out-breath, a very long aaahhh. I know that’s an odd thing to say, but that’s how it feels.”
Gattung rose to prominence when appointed chief executive of Telecom (now Spark) in 1999, an unprecedented move as a woman at the top of corporate New Zealand.
As she notes in her 2010 autobiography, Bird on a Wire, this complemented a wider story about leadership roles for women in Aotearoa, with Jenny Shipley as Prime Minister, Helen Clark as leader of the Opposition, Sian Elias as Chief Justice and Margaret Bazley as chief executive of the biggest government department.
Bazley and Elias were made dames in 1999 and Shipley three years later, and in 2010, after nine years as prime minister, Clark received the country’s highest royal honour, membership of the Order of New Zealand.
Gattung’s other key corporate ventures include co-founding My Food Bag, and she sits on the board of healthcare start-up Tend, as well as the dating website Compatico.
Personal highlights include the journey she’s been on supporting women entrepreneurs; she founded She-EO, which was renamed Coralus.
The new dame’s philanthropy includes the Gattung Foundation, a charity she founded with her sister Angela.
“Definitely one of the lower-profile achievements for me has been my work with the SPCA – the work that had been done to get these 47 SPCAs to be one. People thought it wasn’t doable.”
Despite her new title, Gattung is uncomfortable with the formalities, saying, “You know, I know some dames, but I never know whether to use their title or not.
“I think where it’s appropriate, it will be used. Obviously not by any of my nearest and dearest, and to all the people I’ve worked with in the past 30 years, absolutely not. I’m always going to be T.G. to them!”
Manchester-born Joan Withers, a company director since 1997, has held numerous high-profile roles.
On top of her current position as Warehouse Group chair, which she assumed in 2016, she formerly chaired Mercury Energy, Auckland International Airport and TVNZ. She also served as chief executive of Fairfax New Zealand and The Radio Network.
“I’m a little bit overwhelmed,” Withers said about making the honours list.
When she was growing up, Withers said, her father worked 60 hours a week coiling rubber hose in a factory in Penrose because they were “hard up and desperate to get a house”.
“For someone like me, coming from a very humble background, I hope that this is some sort of reinforcement to younger people, especially younger women, that if you work hard and keep your integrity intact, what you might have thought wasn’t possible is, in fact, achievable.”
Withers’ philanthropic work has focused on empowering women in business. She has written two books about her experience of being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated world.
As a foundation member of Global Women and the 25 Percent Group, Withers has worked to achieve diversity in New Zealand boardrooms.
She also co-founded OnBeingBold, which convenes an annual event empowering women leaders.
“When I first started on governance particularly, I was invariably the only woman on the board... Those are the things I reflect on,” Withers said.
She attributes the damehood to her husband, Brian, whom she has been with since she was 15 years old and inheriting her father’s work ethic.
“Both my parents are dead now,” she said. “My mother didn’t have a great deal of confidence in me, it has to be said, but she would have got a great deal of pleasure out of this.”
Few names are as synonymous with retail in New Zealand than that of Briscoe Group’s managing director Rodney (Rod) Duke.
Duke became managing director of Briscoe Group in 1988 before purchasing the group in 1990. He has since overseen its growth into the largest capitalised retailer on the New Zealand stock exchange.
It’s a far cry from the 12 shabby Briscoes stores purchased by Duke that were losing $2 million a year on $20m turnover.
The group now operates more than 85 Briscoes Homeware and Rebel Sport stores with sales totalling $792m.
Outside of business, Duke’s philanthropy stretches from supporting his employees to children’s healthcare and youth suicide prevention.
Through the R.A. Duke Family Trust and First Foundation, Duke has provided scholarships for tertiary education for Briscoes employees and children of employees since 2010.
Duke established a funeral cover plan for all Briscoes employees and has demonstrated support and generosity on an individual basis, such as establishing ongoing financial plans and ensuring retention of positions for employees facing serious health issues.
In 2004, Briscoe Group became a key partner of the charity Cure Kids and has since raised more than $6.2m for child healthcare research through the Briscoe Group Golf Charity Auction.
The Duke Foundation supports the Youth in Transition project, working to prevent youth suicide and offering specialised support for at-risk youth through the Journey Back to Awesome programme.
Duke’s broader philanthropic support has benefitted Westpac Rescue Helicopter, St John Ambulance, Bayswater School and the Tzu Chi Relief Foundation for overseas relief.
Former Queenstown Mayor, Christchurch Airport boss and tourism leader Jim Boult has been honoured for his services to local government, tourism and the community.
Boult’s three decades of service to the Child Cancer Foundation was also recognised.
He has led and advocated across a range of roles and organisations in the Queenstown Lakes District and nationally for 40 years and was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2015. Boult was elected as Mayor of Queenstown Lakes District Council in 2016 and re-elected in 2019.
During his time in office he led an initiative to provide affordable homes, creation of a localised bed tax as the number of tourists to the region soared, pushed a $2 bus fare scheme and was instrumental in setting up a government working party on Freedom Camping.
When Covid-19 hit in early 2020, Boult led the implementation of funding and support for migrants in the area who found themselves without homes or work, establishment of the Queenstown Greater Needs fund for the medical needs of migrants, the Economic Recovery and District Diversification taskforces, and worked with central government on initiating shovel-ready projects and establishing the Major Events fund.
He described the impact of closed borders as an “economic earthquake” and was a vocal effective advocate for the region during the pandemic. Boult was chief executive of Christchurch International Airport from 2009 until 2013 and was a Crown appointee to the airport’s board for six years before that. In 2010 he was named Airport Personality of the Year by the New Zealand Airports Association.
In 2011, the airport was awarded the Jim Collins Award for Outstanding Contribution to Aviation Safety, recognising the airport’s actions before and after the Canterbury earthquakes. The Child Cancer Foundation, where Boult is Patron, said he and his wife Karen first became supporters of the organisation in the 1980s after their close friend’s 3-year-old son died from cancer.
He chaired the Otago Lifelines Programme for natural disaster readiness and the Metro Mayors section of local government. Boult is patron of the Whakatipu Wildlife Trust, Whakatipu Rowing Club, and continues as chair of the Canterbury Museum Working Party.
He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2015.
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