Roderick Deane
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Roderick (Rod) Deane, (b. 1941 in Auckland), New Zealand economist, public sector reformer, and businessman.
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[edit] Education
Deane completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree with first class honours in economics and a doctorate in economics at Victoria University of Wellington. During his doctoral dissertation, Deane started corresponding with future Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash, in a friendship that would continue throughout their careers.
[edit] Reserve Bank Career
Deane worked at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, rapidly becoming Chief Economist, then Deputy Governor, during the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, Deane was frequently off-side with the Prime Minister and Finance Minister Robert Muldoon, arguing for more economic liberalization and sounder economic policies, although Deane described his personal relationship with Muldoon as cordial and civil. Deane was passed over twice for the Governor’s job by Muldoon.
Previously, he served as Alternate Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund from 1974 to 1976. While at the Reserve Bank, Deane published numerous papers on monetary, exchange rate, and fiscal policy, as well as in the fields of international economics. He led a research team which developed New Zealand's first macroeconometric model and published many papers in this area. He authored and edited a range of books on monetary policy and financial sector matters, the external sector and foreign investment. Deane was later to be the inaugral winner of the NZIER Qantas Economist of the Year Award.
[edit] Currency and constitutional crisis
In 1984, with the election of the Fourth Labour government, Deane was the prime advocate within the Reserve Bank for a devaluation of the New Zealand dollar. Speculation on international markets that the new New Zealand government would devalue the currency led to the Reserve Bank needing to defend the fixed currency in the markets, causing losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. The defeated Prime Minister, Muldoon refused to devalue the currency; a constitutional crisis ensued, during which the incoming Government directed Muldoon to devalue. During the crisis, Deane took the unprecedented step of closing the New Zealand currency to international trading while the dispute was settled.
[edit] State Services Commissioner
In 1986, Deane was appointed Chairman of the State Services Commission, effectively the head of New Zealand’s public service. Along with Minister of Finance Roger Douglas, Deane was the principal architect of state sector reform and corporatisation of New Zealand's state-Owned enterprises. He also oversaw a range of other reforms to the public sector including changes in the wage determination processes to liberalize these, the re-organization of the public service to reduce substantially the number of public servants and improve the efficiency of many government departments, and changes designed to improve the clarity of objectives and the enhancement of accountabilities within the public sector.
In 1987, Deane became Chief Executive of New Zealand's then largest state-owned enterprise, the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand (ECNZ) often known as Electricorp, and was succeeded as State Services Commissioner by Don Hunn.
[edit] Telecom Chief Executive
In 1992, following the privatization of Telecom, Deane became Chief Executive of New Zealand’s largest listed company. He held this role until his retirement in 1999, when he became the non-executive Chairman of Telecom. In the Top 200 Corporate Awards, Deane became CEO of the Year in 1994, CEO of the Decade in 1999 and later Chairman of the Year.
Deane has also served as Chairman of ANZ National Bank and for many years as a Director of the ANZ Banking Group in Melbourne. He was Chairman of the National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, which also now encompasses what was previously the National Art Gallery. He formed the City Gallery Wellington Foundation and for many years was its Chairman. In 2006, Deane announced his resignation from these positions in order to provide time to pursue other interests which he had been developing for some years. In the case of Telecom, the decision to resign followed particularly the Government’s decision to force Telecom to unbundle the local loop, a decision with which he said he fundamentally disagreed.
[edit] Retirement and Voluntary Activities
Deane remains a Director of Woolworths Ltd in Sydney, Chairman of the NZ Seed Fund, and Chairman of New Zealand's second largest listed company, Fletcher Building Limited. He had earlier been Chairman of the Fletcher Challenge Group and oversaw a major restructuring of that Group in 1999-2000 to rationalize and improve its performance. This involved several commercial transactions which were the largest of their kind at that time.
Deane and his wife Gillian have been active patrons of the arts for many years, and they are currently Joint Patrons of the IHC New Zealand, the country's largest voluntary welfare organization. Deane occupied over many years senior positions in the IHC, including that of President, and oversaw a period of great change for people with an intellectual handicap whereby they were enabled to live more normal lives in the normal community. This process was facilitated by closure of the country's special schools and psychopaedic institutions, accompanied by young people moving into normal schools and by IHC buying many hundreds of houses to provide an environment as close as possible to normal living for intellectually handicapped people in regular communities.
Deane was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Victoria University, and for some years, 2000 to 2003, held a personal Chair as Professor of Economics and Management at that university.
