Fran O’Sullivan
Drama aplenty in stellar finance career
Amidst all the political turmoil in Wellington last night there was also an “appreciation” of one of the unsung heroes of the New Zealand capital markets .
Rob Cameron’s career mirrors the development of our markets.
Cameron spoke at an event in the capital last night to mark Xero’s first 10 years as a public company.
Cameron, who was involved in the listing, has had a long, varied and distinguished career ranging from his time leading the NZ Treasury’s Economics 11 section during the revolution of the early 1980s, to Jardens and Fay Richwhite and in 1995 launching his own investment bank, Cameron Partners. He’s played a role in many of the major crown transactions, including privatisations such as Telecom and NZ Rail and major work on the Air NZ bailout.
He also (nearly single-handedly) made the case for the mixed ownership model (mom) which paved the way for the partial privatisations of the Crown’s gentailers by the John Key Government.
When he was a Treasury official during the Sir Robert’s Muldoon’s reign our capital markets were constrained. NZ had been labelled an “economy of fear” by the influential Australian Financial Review.
But Cameron was among several leading officials intent on a major revolution. In 1982-1984 he was part of a group of senior economists and policy advisers (primarily in the Treasury and Reserve Bank) which developed and shaped the reforms that followed the 1984 election.
I can well remember the radical blueprint for the revolution — Economic Management — and still have a copy to this day. Cameron’s own responsibility included the development of policy on stateowned enterprises.
But his signature contribution came much later, as chairman of the Capital Markets Development Taskforce.
Cameron took this role on when our financial markets were still held in considerable disrepute. There had been a loss of investor confidence with the finance companies’ bust. But there were already 700,000 New Zealanders with KiwiSaver accounts and the then Labour Government believed ensuring confidence in our capital markets was imperative.
Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel asked Cameron to chair the taskforce which included Adrian Orr, Cathy Quinn, Franceska Banga, Gareth Morgan, Jonathan Ling, Mark Weldon, Nigel Williams, Rob McLeod and Scott St John.
Cameron said at the time: “In order to produce a working blueprint that will support the growth of New Zealand’s firms, we’ll need to look at the current state of our capital markets, the international context, future risks and opportunities and key changes necessary to deliver the best possible financial system for New Zealand. It will be a challenge but one that the taskforce welcomes.”
The global financial crisis added its own imperatives when it came to NZ companies hunting for equity.
Many recommendations in the final report were incorporated into National Commerce Minister Simon Power’s Financial Markets Conduct legislation and the Financial Markets Authority was formed. This was armed with considerably more powers that the previous markets watchdog, the Securities Commission.
Cameron has made many significant contributions to New Zealand in his professional career — particularly in public policy relating to the Government’s commercial activities and the state-owned enterprise model.
He brought a focus on corporate finance disciplines to public-sector business which contributed to the improved performance of the economy. And he has been a tireless advocate for principled reform at select committees, in seminars and with media.
But he also had an appetite for capitalism.
Brian Gaynor spirited Cameron away from Treasury to become director of research at Jarden & Company, where he had responsibility for equity and economic analysis and advised major institutional investors.
At this time he was a regular economic and business columnist for the Sunday Times.
It was then on to Fay Richwhite where he was an executive director and head of the corporate finance division, leading teams involved in some of the largest capital market transactions that have occurred in New Zealand.
This included the restructuring of the New Zealand Railways Corporation and corporatisation of the core rail business; the privatisation of Telecom Corporate in 1989 (adviser to purchasing consortium led by Ameritech and Bell Atlantic) for $4.25 billion; the IPO of Telecom shares in 1990, the largest public offering in New Zealand’s sharemarket and the first integrated global offering of shares in a New Zealand company; the sale of $1.4b of Crown Forest Assets in 1989 and 1990 (adviser to the New Zealand Government).
In 1995, he struck out and established Cam- eron Partners — now one of New Zealand’s leading investment banks.
In this role Cameron was involved in a range of transactions, the most high profile of these being his leadership of the crown negotiating team responsible for advising the Government on the $885 million recapitalisation of Air NZ.
I believe this role saw Cameron at his most tenacious.
He worked over the politicians, the bankers, the directors and the media as he tried to build consensus for the recapitalisation.
I came back from one of those latenight meetings to look at the TV screen in the Herald office.
It took the September 11 attack on the twin towers to wipe the Air NZ bailout story from the front pages.
There has been drama aplenty.