Team

CEO

Mark Rushworth

Mark is the former head of ihug, New Zealand’s second largest ISP after Telecom New Zealand’s Xtra. He was brought into ihug by then owners iiNet, and led the eventual sale to Vodafone NZ for $41m in 2006.

In 2008 Mark became Vodafone’s Chief Marketing Officer responsible for all commercial, strategy and marketing elements of the New Zealand operation.

Mark has a Masters of Engineering, and was part of Telecom NZ’s graduate program. He was head of interactive media for ITV in the UK, and returned to NZ to be head of consumer mobile marketing for Telecom NZ.

CFO

Michael Gleissner

Prior to joining Pacific Fibre, Michael was Chief Financial Officer at Sealord Group, an international seafood and fishing company. Michael led the finance and IT team as well as managing group strategy, and during his time at Sealord he secured substantial funding facilities from a group of international banks.

Before Sealord Michael was with Fonterra Group, New Zealand’s largest company, where his responsibilities included leading M&A activity, strategy and group business development opportunities. Michael’s early career was as a lawyer with Russell McVeagh in New Zealand and Slaughter and May in London and Singapore, where he gained a broad range of experience in mergers and acquisitions and public company takeovers, as well as corporate, project and asset finance. Michael holds an MBA and an LLB (Honours) and is a CPA (Australia).

Director of Business Development

Mike Constable

Mike was Director of Business Development at Pacnet where he expanded their submarine cable infrastructure. He played the key role in developing and implementing the Unity /EAC Pacific cable, and recently negotiated the West Asia Crossing cable, which was planned to connect Singapore and India.

Mike brings 16 years of submarine cable industry experience, in project management, commercial and strategic roles with companies including Fugro Survey, Alcatel Submarine Networks and Global Crossing. While at Global Crossing, Mike held a key role in developing and implementing the company’s submarine infrastructure programme, connecting over 20 countries across four continents in just over four years, and also formed a team to manage the regulatory aspects of these multi-jurisdictional projects.

Mike has an MBA from Henley Management College, UK and is another Otago University alum.

General Counsel

Alison Lindsay

Alison Lindsay has over 23 years of legal experience, mostly focused on assisting clients in the telecommunications, media and technology sectors in Europe, Middle East/Africa, Asia and Australasia. She is recognised as one of the world’s leading telecommunications lawyers.

She was head of Clifford Chance’s Asian TMT team in Hong Kong for 10 years until mid 2009, and now spends her time with us or as special counsel at leading law firm Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.

Alison has a BA/LLB from Otago University, and is admitted to practice in New Zealand, New South Wales and Hong Kong.

Senior Counsel

Anchali Anandanayagam

Anchali is a senior commercial lawyer with extensive experience in negotiating and advising on ICT arrangements. Anchali’s experience includes negotiating and drafting complex ICT arrangements such Vodafone UK’s global outsourcing of its application development, drafting and advising on capacity and dark fibre IRU deals and advising a range of heavy users of ICT systems.

Anchali was formerly a solicitor with Linklaters LLP in London and Simmonds Stewart and Bell Gully of Wellington, and graduated from Otago University with a LLB/BA (Hons).

Finance Manager

Chris Humphreys

Chris was Associate Director in PwC’s Auckland infrastructure team. During his time at PwC Chris was involved a number of high profile engagements including the proposed merger between Ports of Auckland and Port of Tauranga, the proposed merger between PPCS and Alliance, the Penlink public private partnership and Genesis Energy’s acquisition of the Tekapo generation assets.

Chris has finance expertise in strategy, valuation and financial modelling including the financial aspects of infrastructure regulation in New Zealand. He was involved in valuing large electricity sector companies such as Mighty River Power and Genesis Energy and provided strategic, financial structuring and valuation advice to WEL Networks in respect of its ultrafast broadband rollout.

Chris is a CFA charter holder and holds degrees in science and finance from the University of Otago and the University of Canterbury.

Lance Wiggs

Lance is a consultant and entrepreneur. He is co-founder and director of PowerKiwi, Lingopal, My Tours and several other businesses. He is a director of several companies including PowerKiwi, Texmate NZ Limited and Cadimage and is a councillor of Internet NZ. Lance works with Equip Design Integration as part of the Better By Design program to assist high-growth, export-led New Zealand companies.

Lance has over 20 years’ business experience, working with and consulting to a large variety of companies across the world. He was with McKinsey in Washington DC, the EBRD in London and co-led turnarounds at BHP Billiton plants in Australia and South Africa. Lance consulted to Trade Me, and advised on the eventual sale to Fairfax Media for NZ$750m. Lance has a Technology degree from Massey University and an MBA from Yale University.

Advisors

Strategic Advisor

Russ Matulich

Russ is assisting Pacific Fibre with the development of key relationships, establishment of the sales organization and key negotiations with suppliers, partners and customers. Russ was Managing Director of the Asia Pacific Region for TE SubCom, where he successfully led the sale of a number of large systems and the turnaround of the division.
Russ has over 20 years of telecommunications industry experience and is seconded to Pacific Fibre from David Ross Group.

Technical Advisor

Bill Richards

Bill is an independent consultant who provides subsea cable design and procurement expertise to a number of telcos and cable operators and builders. His industry experience is extensive. Bill is advising on the RFQ and vendor selection process.

Board and Senior Advisors

Sam Morgan

Sam founded Trade Me, New Zealand’s most successful internet business that accounts for over half of all locally served traffic on the NZ internet. In 2006 Trade Me was sold to Australian media company, Fairfax, for $750m. Sam left his CEO role at Trade Me in 2008 and now serves as an advisor.

Sam is an active venture capitalist and philanthropist, investing in entrepreneurs building scalable social models in the Pacific, Asia and Africa. Sam is a director of Fairfax Media and Xero, a publicly-listed software company, and is variously involved as a shareholder, director or advisor to a number of high-growth software companies in New Zealand, including Visfleet and Sonar6.

Michael Boustridge

Michael is the former President of BT Global Services Multi National Customers, where he was responsible for providing networked IT services to global enterprises in more than 176 countries.

A native New Zealander, Michael has served on the Board of Trustees for XPRIZE Foundation, an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. The has also served with the Los Angeles World Council and currently serves as Board Director of Riverbed Technology (RVBD), Contact Solutions (www.contactsolutions.com) and numerous advisory boards for corporations .

 

Rod Drury

A recipient of New Zealand’s most prestigious hi-tech award, the Tait Flying Kiwi in 2009, Rod is renowned for his entrepreneurial skills in the technology sector. He recently established Xero, a successful ‘cloud’ accounting system. In early 2006, prior to setting up Xero, Rod sold his award-winning email archiving software company, Aftermail, to USA publicly-listed company, Quest Software.

Rod is a director of the New Zealand Stock Exchange and also sits on the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise Beachhead Advisory Board. He was an independent director of Trade Me at the time it was sold to Fairfax. In 2008 Rod was recognised as a KEA World Class New Zealander and was conferred an Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Computer Society (HFNZCS), recognising his achievements, ongoing advocacy, and willingness to assist others in the industry.

David Kirk, MBE

David Kirk is Chairman of the board of directors of Hoyts Theatre Group, Australia’s oldest theater chain with over 400 screens in Australia and New Zealand.

He is former Chief Executive of Fairfax Media Limited, the newspaper, magazine and digital publisher in Australia and New Zealand. David led the purchase by Fairfax of Trade Me in 2006.

He was previously Chief Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand and was captain of the All Blacks when they won the World Cup in 1987.

David is a Rhodes Scholar, is a citizen of both Australia and New Zealand and lives in Sydney with his family.

Sir Stephen Tindall

Sir Stephen founded The Warehouse in 1982, holding the position of Managing Director until January 2001. In 2009 the Warehouse Group had 86 retail stores in New Zealand with sales of NZ $1.72 billion. The New Zealand Herald named him Business Person of the year in 1997 — the year in which he became an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit — and in 1998 he was named the Deloitte-New Zealand Management magazine Executive of the Year.

In 1995 Sir Stephen and his wife set up the Tindall Foundation, to provide a hand up to New Zealanders in need. He is also the founder and Chairman of Kea, the global talent network with over 25,000 members, that helps connect, and leverage the knowledge and contacts of, talented New Zealanders around the world.

In 2007, he was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in recognition of services to business and the community in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Sir Stephen has been closely involved with the NZ fibre infrastucture in his capacity as Chair of the Growth Innovation Advisory Board.