APN News & Media Ltd, owner of The New Zealand Herald newspaper, has appointed a former Telecom New Zealand executive as chief executive officer and named New Zealand accountant John Harvey to its board after calls for board renewal.
Donal Buggy and Cameron O'Reilly will retire from the APN board from December 31.
On January 1, Brett Chenoweth, a 41-year-old Australian based executive, becomes chief executive officer on a base salary of $A1.5 million ($NZ1.96 million) per annum, plus short and long term incentives consistent with market practice. He replaces Brendan Hopkins.
Mr Chenoweth is currently one of a number of managing directors for The Silverfern Group, a New York-based merchant bank founded by Clive Holmes, who attended Victoria University in Wellington and has worked for Deutsche Bank.
Prior to joining Silverfern, Mr Chenoweth co-founded Cesura Partners, a boutique direct investment business in Australia and was head of mergers and acquisitions and head of strategy for the Telecom New Zealand group, according to the Silverfern website.
He is also a previous head of business development for ecorp Ltd, Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd's internet investment company. He has also held senior executive roles at Village Roadshow Pictures and ninemsn Pty. He holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Economics degree from the University of Queensland.
"Brett's experience in growing content-based businesses will enable APN to accelerate efforts to serve its high value audiences with an expanded range of content and services," chairman Gavin O' Reilly said.
Mr Chenoweth said APN has a foundation of great content in a changing industry.
"We'll be working to ensure marketers are deriving maximum value from the audiences who enjoy that content."
Mr Harvey, 58, the former senior partner of Price Waterhouse Coopers New Zealand becomes an independent non-executive director on January 1.
"These changes now ensure that APN has a smaller board comprising a majority of independent non-executive directors," Mr Gavin O'Reilly said.
BKK Partners, a consultancy whose executives include former federal Treasurer Peter Costello, earlier campaigned for board renewal at APN and concern has been expressed about the influence of major shareholder Independent News & Media Ltd, a company associated with Irishman Sir Tony O'Reilly, who is father of Cameron and Gavin O'Reilly.
"After 18 years serving the interests of all shareholders, the board believes that shareholders would wish to especially recognise Cameron's singular contribution to the company, as one of the original architects of the APN Group dating all the way back to the original investment of Provincial Newspapers Queensland in 1987," Gavin O'Reilly said.
"As shareholders know well, Cameron spearheaded and was involved in every major strategic development that has produced the extremely well-diversified and well invested group that is APN News & Media today," he said.