Anyone on here had prior experience or encounters working with Blair Woodbury?
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The new CFO:
https://news.vodafone.co.nz/cfoappointment
Mr Woodbury has had an opportunity to demonstrate his strategic thinking and I would argue that a good strategic thinker that is able to implement this thinking into financial and commercial outcomes is more valuable than a CFO (appreciating that a good CFO should also possess some strategic ability). In terms of timing, Mr Woodbury had probably expressed a desire to leave and this is their way of retaining his services. I would also like to think that Martin (as opposed to some of the other Exec team) is a good judge of whether Mr Woodbury brings the necessary strategic skills to the table.
Discl: holder of SKT (some at significantly more than the current SP).
This Blair fellow was a McKinsey guy once— so has the skills to work out what Martin wants to do/say and then come up with whatever is needed to support the case.
He must be exceptional. He was already rewarded with heavily discounted shares during the CR (he never owned a single share prior to that).
Now he will get to do less work on higher pay. So long as he steeples his fingers at the Board Meetings, he should be fine.
Sounds like a good negotiator to me. Perhaps even better than Trump?
Maybe Blair can be the bad cop during negotiations for sports rights and Martin can be the nice guy giving a lifeline to the sports bodies. Blair can go low and Martin can go high. Yin and Yang.
...or maybe get Martin to authoritatively evisculate integrated relationships
He’s going to add real value this Blair guy