Rising to the top in the milk trade
‘‘I hate this stuff,’’ says the likely next chairman of New Zealand’s biggest company, Fonterra.
John Wilson is on the spot, at his own dining table in his own farm homestead south of Kihikihi, south of Te Awamutu in the mighty Waikato.
The hated stuff is not the prospect of being Sir Henry van der Heyden’s successor at the top table of the $20 billion a year dairy juggernaut – that’s providing he’s re-elected to the board by farmers this year – but talking about himself.
He can’t have done much of that in the nine years he’s been on the Fonterra board, because the first thing farmers tend to say about the 48-year-old father of four is that they don’t know him.
In a co- operative of 10,500- odd farmers that calls itself ‘‘a family’’, that’s quite a verdict. Every farmer knows van der Heyden – every farmer has his mobile number.
The second thing people say about Wilson is that he’s bright, very bright.
And the third? That he’s a bit too arrogant.
Wilson laughs. He’s heard – and read – it all before. He reckons the reporter must ‘‘be talking to the wrong people” – on all counts.
Another popular impression, that Wilson is “Henry’s man”, also raises a laugh, but with a hint of flint this time.
Wilson was the first chairman of Fonterra’s first shareholder council, set up to be the shareholders’ watchdog after Fonterra was formed in 2001 from a huge industry merger.
So he really shouldn’t be a stranger to the shareholder base outside his own Te Awamutu farmer ward electorate.
But Wilson, who recalls he had to be “dragged out of the cowshed” to head the council, was in the job a mere year before he was catapulted on to the board of Fonterra itself.
Since then he’s kept a pretty low profile – though inside the company he’s been a powerhouse, driving capital structure change. The name Wilson is synonymous with the contentious TAF scheme (share trading among farmers).
Van der Heyden says Wilson may not be well known because a sign of good governance is that the chairman ‘‘carries 90 to 99 per cent of the front of the company’’.
On the suggestion of arrogance, there’s no doubt the years have mellowed Wilson. Van der Heyden again: ‘‘ As you get older you mature. People used to say I was really hard- nosed, black and white etc.’’
Wilson’s likely election as next chairman was predictable. Industry scuttlebutt is that van der Heyden has been grooming him as his successor for years – hence