The reason there's only eight directors named in the Atlas Network think tank the NZInitiative, in their 2022 annual report published on 1 April 2023 is because the ninth director did not join until 12 May 2023.
That ninth and most recent director was Elizabeth Mary Naylor who had spent 20 years working for Johnson and Johnson and recently ( last five years ) was lead for market access ( for new drugs ) and Government affairs at Janssen - the pharmaceuticals company of J&J.
As you may be aware David Seymour announced a policy on 3 October 2023 that required Medsafe to approve within one week any drug or medical device that has been approved by two foreign regulatory bodies with comparable or more robust systems compared with New Zealand. The coalition agreement modified this to "Require Medsafe to approve new pharmaceuticals within 30 days of them being approved by at least two overseas regulatory agencies recognised by New Zealand."
I did a quick assessment of National's tradeoff between free prescription charges for everyone and the 13 new cancer drugs - but could not discover any from Janssen - but I did discover three of the 13 are now declined by Pharmac and Reti is making excuses for delays.
Shortly after the coalition agreement between National and Act was signed Elizabeth Naylor quit Janssen ( J&J ) and started her own consultancy - her director's consent was dated 5 March 2024 ( four days ago ) and she has a 100% share in her new venture.
Before I talk more about the other eight of the nine directors, the notion the NZ initiative is a platform for policy making for industries that typically have a shady past or difficulty advertising unpopular products is only partially true.
The industries who you might expect to hide behind a think tank with claws on Government like Big Pharma, Tobacco, Alcohol, Big Oil & Gas ( Energy ) are represented for sure but so are those who profit mostly from the kinds of policies pushed by National and Act - such as Real Estate, Retail Banks, Big Legal, Investment Banks, Multinationals, Finance and Insurance. Occasionally there's an anomaly among the membership - like Insolvency - what's that doing there - and who is surprised to find Waterstone amongst the membership - and it's easy to guess why Damien Grant gets platformed over at Stuff.
There's also PR firms attached to the NZ initiative and most notably BOAG Allen S&G is in there ( Michelle Boag ) and companies making money out of a wealthy aging population like Retirement Villages and Private Health Insurance ( access denied for the aging poor ).
The membership group is consistently around 70 companies over the past six years but the annual reports published by the NZ initiative never detail their balance sheets like many other firms do. So it's hard to say who is contributing how much - to their causes and special interests - via the NZ Initiative.
The rest of this article will be a brief summary of the other eight directors for your general information.
Who can forget the Supermarket Duopoly that Labour fought so hard against to bring down supermarket prices during the cost of living crisis, not many if any, but you may not be surprised to learn both sides of the duopoly are firmly ensconced on the Board of the Atlas Network think tank.
Let's start with Foodstuffs who own New World, Pak'nSave, Four Square, Gilmores etc..and in the North Island the CE is Chris Quinn who is also on the board of the NZ Initiative. Chris participated in a podcast there about the commerce commission's market study and well - seems it took a lot of time and money to tell the Commerce Commission things and supply data to them - and Eric Crampton was not impressed that there was not more focus on freeing up border entry - but who cares - the point is Chris Quinn looks after all these co-ops in the North Island and yes he spoke out about retail crime.
Right now Chris Quinn is likely interested in what the Commerce Commission will decide about Foodstuffs application to merge the North Island and South Island operations - cos it just pushed back its decision after preliminary issues and Foodstuffs rejects the concerns which centre around the effects on competition.
Btw Chris Quinn is into cars and chairs Giltrap - and yanno cars, cars, cars - supercars etc. Brmmm, brmmm, neeow.
On the other side of the Supermarket Sector is Woolworths/Countdown - chaired by good old Scott Perkins who is also a director of the NZ Initiative and probably gets along rather well with Chris Quinn in that cosy wee duopoly. While Scott is busy handing much of the food sector in NZ he's also chair of Origin Energy over the ditch - who generate electricity from coal, gas and a bit of solar. Notably Scotty me old mate, faced a controversy when In September 2022 Origin Energy pleaded guilty to releasing nearly 800,000 litres of polluted water from its coal seam gas operations in Queensland’s Western Downs region.
Next of the nine is John Frederick Judge, who can forget when John had to step down as chair of ACC when Bronwyn Pullar threatened to expose that privacy leak and Michelle Boag ( formerly President of the National Party and discloser of Covid Patient data ) rushed to Bronwyn's defence. Anyway John left ACC and became chair of the National Bank and then ta da - Chair of ANZ until that revolving door switched him out and placed John Key in that Chairman's seat. Oh they say its who you know. John Judge had also been chair of EY ( another Atlas member ) and did good chairing Te Papa despite the English version of the Treaty ha ha.
Matthew Cockram appears to me to live and breathe Britomart and developing it with trees and all that brick and earth toned good stuff. You know the gig - Hotel Britomart and all those buildings. Matthew is CE of Cooper and Company who provide luxury views at the Landing up North, Landing wines, a big game fishing launch business - and of course the Britomart stuff is attached to them. Plus they do those multi story car parks in Auckland - I used to park in one every day. There's not much to say cos Matthew was a big time lawyer - a partner at Bell Gully who seem to do much of the legal work for NZ Initiative. I do note that way back in 1995 Matthew ceased to be a director of Tanner Holdings limited before they were struck off ( if I am correct? ). Now I am not saying there's any connection here - but Tanner Group Holdings were named in the Panama Papers - they were registered in the British Virgin islands and linked to Hong Kong - and yes their agent was Mossack Fonseca.
Neil Pavior-Smith we've talked about Neil before - and Neil was the Chancellor at Victoria University but is best known for being MD at Forsyth Barr - share broking and investment bank. Because we've talked about Neil before I'll just throw in that Forsyth Barr has a small shareholding of something like 2.5% at NZME ( NZ Herald and NewsCrap ZB ) plus a 2.26% share in Genesis Energy.
Barbara Joan Chapman - well right now Barbara is independent chair of NZME ( Mike Hosking and mates ) , chair of Genesis Energy ( all that coal at Huntly ), Acting Chair of Fletcher Building ( oh the lack of supply of Gib ), a director of BNZ and a director of ASB Investment Services as well as being Deputy Chair of the Atlas Network think tank NZ Initiative. I'll just leave it there...so many chairs... but she has a 25% shareholding in the NZ Initiative so seems pretty invested ( lol ).
The other two directors of the NZ Initiative are Oliver Hartwich ( the guy with the German accent ) who arrived via the UK think tanks and then the Australian Atlas Network think tanks to the New Zealand Atlas Network think tanks.
And last - Mr Roger John Partridge.
Roger was a partner at - you guessed it - Bell Gully and got a degree in law at Cambridge. He was chair of the Business Round Table for two years before it merged into the NZ Initiative back in 2012. Now he's chair of this Atlas Network think tank.
There's plenty more to say but this is enough for one day.
The nine board members and the approximately seventy members have considerable influence in New Zealand and if you are looking to understand why - why - why - why certain policies are made into law by the coalition - you only need to connect the dots of interest.
More Atlas Network Intrigue - who are these people?
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