Spark New Zealand announced Mark Verbiest (pictured), who chaired the board since December 2011, is standing down and will be succeeded by Justine Smyth.

Smyth, who is a director, will take over as chair on 3 November. She brings extensive governance experience, including being chair of Spark’s audit and risk management, and human resources and compensation committees.

Verbiest said with best practice governance succession planning in mind, he decided to retire from the board at the annual shareholders’ meeting in November.

“More than half of the current board, including myself, was appointed upon the demerger with Chorus in 2011. At some point, it will be appropriate for each of the long-serving directors to transition off the board. As a consequence, I do not believe it would be good governance to risk having several directors potentially retiring in short order, and, as the director with the longest association with Spark, I prefer to lead by example. In my view, the foundation for future success is solid, and I feel the time to renew the chairmanship is now,” Verbiest said.

Milestones
In a statement Spark said Verbiest was chairman during a period of significant transformation for the company. During his tenure Spark refocused itself solely on the New Zealand market, invested billions in its data network, upgraded its IT systems and set up a Spark Ventures unit to lead the development of new businesses.

Smyth will also succeed Verbiest as chair of the nominations and corporate governance committee. Alison Gerry will replace Smyth as the chair of the audit and risk management committee, while Alison Barrass will take over for Smyth as the chair of the human resources and compensation committee.

Spark, with a 38 per cent share of the country’s mobile subscribers, trails market leader Vodafone by 1 percentage point, according to Q2 data from GSMA Intelligence.