Barry John Brown

Born:  2 October 1950
Years at PNBHS:  1964-68
Club:  Murray
School Prefect
Head Prefect College House 1968
1st in 6th Form Geography and History
1st in 7th Form Geography
1st XV 1967/68
3rd XI cricket 1968
Flyweight boxing champion 1966
Winner of the Hodder Brothers Cup for All-round Excellence in scholarship and sport in the senior school
 

After leaving PNBHS, Barry studied law at Victoria University, graduating with an Honours degree in 1973. He began working for major law firm, Chapman Tripp, in 1972 and has been with them since then, apart from three years working and travelling overseas in the mid-1970s. Barry had 35 years as a partner of Chapman Tripp from 1980 to 2015 and he has been a consultant since 2015.

Barry practised as a corporate lawyer in Wellington and Auckland from 1978 with particular specialty in mergers and acquisitions. In 2011 Barry received the New Zealand Dealmaker of the Year award at the Australasian Legal Business Awards. He represented the NZ government on the privatisation of Telecom (now Spark), on the bail-out and sale of the Bank of New Zealand and on the sale and bail-out of Air New Zealand.

Major private sector transactions included acting for Lloyds Bank on its sale of the National Bank to ANZ Bank, acting for Shell on the sale of its service stations,, acting for HJ Heinz on the sale of Tip Top and Tegel, acting on the merger of three businesses to form Heartland Bank, acting for the owners of Trust Bank’s sale to Westpac, representing Rupert Murdoch’s interests on the sale of their New Zealand newspapers (including the Dominion Post) to Fairfax and acting for the US owner on the sale of Carter Holt Harvey.

Barry has held, or currently holds, other positions including being a member of the New Zealand Racing Board, a member of the New Zealand Stock Exchange Markey Surveillance Panel, a member of the Financial Market Authority’s Audit Oversight Committee and he is a trustee of the Victoria University of Wellington Foundation.

Barry has been married to wife Jan since 1979 and he has three adult children.