Obituary: Lyndsay Papps

By JOHN ROUGHAN

Company director. Born 1920, died on August 22 at his Waikanae home, aged 80

Lyn Papps was presiding over much of corporate New Zealand at the end of an era. By 1983 he was chairman of 18 companies, deputy chairman of three and on the boards of another five. He also had the confidence of the man who really ran NZ Inc in those days, Sir Robert Muldoon.

But Lyn Papps was no silent servant of the command economy.

The Government, he said as early as December 1981, "professes to stand for private enterprise but wants to have a say in everything. That's not private enterprise."

He was bristling in particular at that time about the "dead hand" of company regulation in which a civil servant could block mergers and takeovers.

Before the fourth Labour Government arrived Lyn Papps was in charge of the railways and, surprisingly, opposed the removal of regulations that gave rail a monopoly of long-haul freight.

He was fiercely loyal to the interests of all companies he led and was forever fielding journalists' questions about whether he had a hand in too many.

His directorships then included UEB Industries, NZ Forest Products, ANZ Banking Group, Dalgety NZ Ltd, NZ Motor Corporation, Odlins Ltd, National Mutual, Group Rentals, Steel and Tube Holdings, Commercial Union, General Insurance and many more.

It was a matter, he said, of avoiding companies that were in the same line of business, though conceding that his membership of the boards of Odlins and NZFP were getting "fairly close."

Lyndsay Mason Papps had not set out to be a corporate figure. Born in Remuera, the son of a Latin teacher, he grew up in New Plymouth where the family moved when he was a year old. From New Plymouth Boys High School he went to Victoria University.

War interrupted his study and he served as a navigator with the Army and the Air Force in the Pacific.

After graduating in law he joined Bell Gully and Co in Wellington and became a partner in 1951. It was as a senior partner for company law at Bell Gully that he became solicitor for a number of leading firms and was invited on to their boards.

Railways came to consume the bulk of his 80-hour working weeks after 1982 but his role as chairman did not long survive the change of Government in 1984.

He became a wary supporter of the changes launched by the Lange-Douglas Government, warning that the pace might be too rapid. In the newly deregulated economy he was soon presiding over closures of UEB's plants at Wanganui and Gisborne.

He wound down his directorships in the late 1980s, avoiding the free-wheeling ways that smirched many a reputation. In 1989, when directors of Rada Corporation were charged with breaches of the Securities Act, Lyn Papps was not among them.