New Carter chief eyes growth

By Mark Reynolds

Chris Liddell, chief executive designate of Carter Holt Harvey, is confident the forest products company is in good financial shape to grow its customer base after three years of battening down the hatches against a worldwide commodity-price storm.

As chief financial officer of the company from 1995 until early last year, Mr Liddell played a pivotal role in overseeing a plan to strengthen Carter Holt's finances by slashing costs, selling off non-core businesses, reducing debt and consolidating operational subsidiaries.

Carter Holt still has more work to do on that plan, but Mr Liddell said he is taking over the helm of New Zealand's second largest company at a time when it can also move more aggressively to win new business.

"Clearly I would like to think I am going in now with a more positive and growth-orientated phase coming through for the company," Mr Liddell told the Business Herald.

"I think we are much more confident about that than we were say three or four years ago as we started to go into this restructuring phase. It has been very hard yards in terms of just getting our operational performance up to a good standard ... we have been swimming against a pretty strong tide."

But Carter Holt has survived the downturn, and Mr Liddell is keen to build on some recent gains. "I think the difficulties of the marketplace have masked some very, very good things we have done in the growth area recently; for example three years ago 10 per cent of our sales were in Australia and now it is 40 per cent," he said.

Mr Liddell was unwilling to set any specific growth targets, but if his track record is anything to go by, there is a good chance Carter Holt's move forward will be as speedy as the Porsche that he drives.

When Mr Liddell joined Carter Holt in 1995 he was just 36, but had already left behind him a successful career as a stock broker and investment banker.

He had been joint chief executive of brokerage CS First Boston New Zealand, sharing that job with another high-flying investment banker, Bill Trotter.

Mr Liddell joined Carter Holt at a time when it was extracting comfortable earnings from a buoyant forest-products market and was expanding internationally, but the worldwide commodities slump changed all of that. His job as chief financial officer centred on restructuring the company to save costs and stay internationally competitive.

"There is still work we can do in making the company better in those ways but I think our operational standards now also allow us to look for new customers," Mr Liddell said.

The Carter Holt chief executive role will be Mr Liddell's first time in sole charge of a major industrial company, though he was chief executive of the company's wood products group before being elevated to the heir-apparent roles of deputy managing director and chief operating officer earlier this year.

"We have a very strong internal and senior management team now so I will have some very strong operational people to help me," he said. "My new role will be about creating standards, creating expectations, managing them and providing support and decisions people need to get on with the job," he said.

"In terms of leadership style I am very competitive and demand results. But I like to work with people and believe I can do that at Carter Holt."