Chorus and Telecom: Building the Boards

In 2011, Sarah Naud and Matt Stanley sat down with the chairman of Telecom New Zealand, Wayne Boyd. Telecom, a publicly listed company and the largest telecom provider in New Zealand, was being divided into two publicly traded companies, Chorus, a telecom infrastructure company, and new Telecom, a telecom retail services provider. In connection with this split, Naud and Stanley were charged with overseeing the process of creating two new boards of directors for these companies. As part of this process, the team reviews the roles and responsibilities of a board, defines what capabilities the new boards need, and reduces a preliminary list of candidates to a short list. They must now use this short list to create two strong boards.