Auckland-based lawyer, Lex Henry, has been appointed chairman of the Researched Medicines Industry (RMI).

A Special Counsel with Auckland law firm Minter Ellison Rudd Watts, Mr Henry currently chairs merchant bank Cranleigh, is a Director of Ngai Tahu Properties and health software company MedTech, and a member of the Auckland University of Technology Council and AUT Millennium Institute.

The Deputy Chair of the TransTasman Business Circle, and a Trustee of the Christchurch Arts Festival and the Asia NZ Foundation, until recently Mr Henry was a Landcorp director and the Deputy Chairman of OnTrack (KiwiRail).

RMI Chief Executive Officer, Denise Wood, said Mr Henry also came to the RMI with a background as a director of an English bank and two Wall Street investment banks, and had served as a New Zealand diplomat covering ASEAN.

His extensive national and international business experience and broad engagement within New Zealand’s public and private sectors, was a positive fit with opportunities and challenges currently facing the country’s health arena, Ms Wood said.

“His breadth of experience will be critical in further enabling the RMI to meet its vision of ensuring New Zealand patients enjoy equitable access to high quality, innovative and cost effective medicines available internationally,” Ms Wood said.

Mr Henry will replace Dr Pippa MacKay who resigned in October to focus on her Christchurch medical practice following five years as the RMI chair.

ENDS

Gordon Campbell: On John Key’s Agenda For The Nation

There seemed to be three main components to John Key’s speech:

a) tax cuts largely paid for by a hike in GST
b) mining in national parks and on conservation land, while building more roads.
c) giving firms easier access to the r&d from Crown Research Institutes, so that business can continue to get the taxpayer to pick up the tab for the research that keeps them competitive.

After all, corporate welfare is always such a blessed thing – its only social welfare that corrodes enterprise and ambition. More>>