Judges

Peter Griffiths (Chairman) – B.Sc (Hons)

Peter recently retired as Managing Director of BP New Zealand after a successful 21 year career with the BP group. His previous roles within BP included General Manager Papua New Guinea; Commercial Manager for BP New Zealand's Fuel and LPG interests; and Terminal Operations Manager. For the last 10 years he was Managing Director of BP New Zealand and also Chairman of BP South West Pacific.

Peter has previously served on the boards of New Zealand Refining Company, Liquigas and Bitumix. He is currently a director of Wanganui Gas, New Zealand Oil and Gas, Greenstone Energy and New Zealand Diving and Salvage.

Toby Stevenson

Toby is a Consulting Director with international economics consulting firm Sapere Research Group. His expert area is electricity trading and risk management and he established himself as an independent energy consultant in 2004.

Toby was the General Manager Electricity Trading at Contact Energy from its inception in 1996 to 2003 and has held a number of industry governance positions including Chairman of the New Zealand Electricity Market (2000 – 2003) and Chairman of the Electricity Commission’s Common Quality Advisory Group (2004 – 2009). He was a member of the Technical Advisory Group to the Ministerial Review of the Electricity Market in 2009.

John Hancock - MBA, MA

John Hancock is Utilities Industry Director for Hewlett Packard in the Asia Pacific and is a member of HP’s Global Sector organisation for Utilities. Much of this role involves bringing HP’s experience in world class utility operations from overseas to the Asia Pacific region.

John has over 20 years of experience in the commercialisation and liberalisation of utility companies around the world.
 

DAVID HUNT

David is a director of Concept Consulting Group, a firm which provides specialist advice on energy sector issues in New Zealand and Australia.


Before joining Concept, David held a number of senior executive roles within the energy sector, most recently as Chief Executive of Contact Energy. David has also worked in the Australian energy market. He was formerly an independent director of Synergy, an electricity and gas retailer in Western Australia. Prior to his involvement with energy businesses, David held a number of senior government roles, including Energy Policy Manager at the NZ Treasury, and Economic Advisor to the Minister of Finance.
 

John Kidd

Now at John Kidd Consulting, John was previously the Head of Research at specialist sharebroking and investment banking firm McDouall Stuart. John has 15 years of analytical and consulting experience in the energy sector, including four years at Shell's global head office in London where he worked on the development of new E&P, gas and petrochemical business ventures across the Shell Group. John's work has taken him to more than 20 countries.

JOHN BAY - MSc, BSc, BA

John is the Principal of consulting firm, Contract Strategies Limited, where he provides expert advice to clients on strategy development and undertakes on their behalf both commercial and dispute resolution negotiations. John is currently the chairman of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ) and is a non-executive director of EXITO. Prior to joining Contract Strategies, John was Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of junior New Zealand explorer, L&M Energy Limited. John has held senior management assignments with Mighty River Power and Fletcher Challenge Energy and in the past has been a director of several energy and non-energy entities, including Maui Development Limited, Kupe Development Limited and Southern Petroleum NL. Before immigrating to New Zealand in 1990, John spent 10 years working in various petroleum engineering assignments for Tenneco Oil and for Gulf Oil.

John has over 30 years of international oil & gas experience and is a registered Professional Engineer (Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering) in Texas. He is a 30+ year member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, a 15+ year member of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators and a member of the New Zealand Institute of Directors where he has received provisional accreditation as a professional director.

Andrew Bascand - MCom (Hons)

Andrew is the Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at New Zealand based asset manager Harbour Asset Management. Andrew has responsibility for all Australasian equity portfolios.

Prior to joining Harbour Asset Management, Andrew spent 10 years with AllianceBernstein (NZ) as Senior Vice President and Portfolio Manager responsible for portfolio construction of all Australasian mandates.

In that role Andrew and his team were consistently recognised by the industry for excellence in funds management. Andrew has more than 27 years' investment management experience in roles with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Bank of England, AMP and with Merrill Lynch Global Asset Management (UK) as Managing Director of Global Equity Products. With Merrill Lynch, Andrew managed global equity accounts for pension funds in Japan, Sweden, Spain, Chile, England, the US, Germany and South Africa.

Matt Freeman - B.Com

Matt is the founding editor of Energy News and managing director of Freeman Media.

He established Freeman Media in 2002 with the launch of print-based newsmagazine Telecommunications Review which went on to win a number of TUANZ and MPA awards. He later launched a daily realtime news service for the telecommunications industry, The Line, before they were both sold.

His career has included sales, marketing and management roles at Telecom, Flight Centre, Gulliver’s Pacific and operating his own travel agency business in Australia.