Jason Paris, one of the most visible chief executives in New Zealand business, is stepping down from the top job at telecommunications company One New Zealand after nearly eight years in charge. The company announced on 1 July that its current chief financial officer, Nick Judd, has been appointed to succeed him.
Paris has led the business through one of the biggest reinventions in the local corporate world. He took the reins when the company was still Vodafone New Zealand and oversaw its rebrand to One New Zealand in 2022, three years after the New Zealand arm was carved out of the global Vodafone group. The local operation was bought in 2019 by Wellington-based infrastructure investor Infratil and Canadian asset manager Brookfield in a deal worth about $3.4 billion, at the time one of the largest business sales the country had seen.
In a statement released through the company, Paris said the decision to move on came from a position of strength. He said, “Leading One New Zealand has been the privilege of my career. The people here are simply extraordinary, and I’ll miss working alongside them every day.” He added that he was “absolutely delighted the Board has appointed Nick,” describing his successor as “an outstanding leader” who would “do a fantastic job leading One New Zealand into its next chapter.”
Board chair Phillippa Harford said Paris had guided the company through its separation from Vodafone and pushed it to try things that had not been done before. Under his leadership the company launched a nationwide satellite-to-mobile texting service, built on a partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Starlink network, that lets ordinary phones send messages in areas with no cell coverage. The company has described the rollout as a world first at a national scale, and it has been one of the headline achievements Paris has pointed to during his tenure.
Paris told 1News he planned to take a break before deciding on his next move. “After nearly eight years, with the business performing strongly and our strategy firmly in place, this feels like the right time,” he said.
His successor is a known quantity inside the business. Nick Judd has been chief financial officer at One New Zealand and, before that, held the same role at Tourism Holdings, the listed motorhome and rental company. Earlier in his career he spent more than 15 years at Air New Zealand, working across strategy, sales and growth in both New Zealand and overseas markets. Harford described him as a well-rounded executive with deep experience across strategy, operations, sales, commercial and finance, and said his background gave him strong enterprise leadership skills underpinned by commercial judgement.
The choice of an internal finance chief to take over is a fairly conventional move for a business that says it is performing well and does not want to change direction. Judd knows the numbers, the network investment programme and the shareholder expectations, having sat in the room where all of it is decided. For customers, the change at the top is unlikely to mean much in the short term. One New Zealand is one of the country’s three big mobile and broadband providers alongside Spark and 2degrees, and the day-to-day business of running the network, selling plans and competing on price will carry on regardless of who holds the chief executive title.
The handover comes at a testing time for the wider telecommunications sector. Growth in mobile and broadband is slow because almost everyone who wants a connection already has one, so the companies are fighting over each other’s customers rather than signing up new ones. At the same time they are spending heavily on network upgrades, including the continued rollout of faster 5G mobile coverage and, in One New Zealand’s case, the satellite service that is meant to set it apart from its rivals. Keeping costs under control while still investing for the future is the balancing act Judd inherits.
Ownership adds another layer. Infratil, which is listed on the New Zealand share market, holds a large stake in One New Zealand and treats it as one of its core assets, so the company’s performance feeds directly into the returns of thousands of ordinary Infratil shareholders and the KiwiSaver funds that own the stock. Those investors will be watching how smoothly the transition goes and whether the company keeps generating the cash it has been returning to its owners.
Paris built a reputation as an unusually public chief executive, active on social media and quick to weigh in on issues from network reliability during storms to the price of mobile plans and the arrival of new technology. That visibility made him one of the better-known business leaders in the country, and his departure removes a familiar voice from the sector. Judd, by contrast, has kept a lower profile in the finance seat, and how he chooses to lead in public will be one of the early tests of his tenure.
The board said it would support Judd as he settles into the role and would mark Paris’s contribution during the transition period. Neither the company nor Paris has named where he might go next.
What do you make of the changing of the guard at One New Zealand, and how well are the big telcos serving you as customers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply