Quiet regime change as Annelies McClure leaves Overseas Investment Office

The long-serving manager of the Overseas Investment Office, Annelies McClure, has quietly departed the office and been formally replaced by an acting deputy chief executive, Lesley Haines.

McClure headed the office for 11 years, during which time the office grew from a staff of six to "nearly 30," according to a low-key farewell announcement in a monthly newsletter from the OIO, which has the statutory duty to examine all applications from foreign investors to buy land deemed to be 'sensitive', significant business assets, and fishing quota.

The OIO had become something of a target both for politicians opposed to foreign direct investment and for applicants and their New Zealand-based advisers, who had grown increasingly critical of the length of time taken to make recommendations, although the delays were sometimes the fault of the ministers charged with signing off final decisions.

Ms McClure was often caught in the crossfire, with critics of the overseas investment regime focusing as much on the office's meagre resources as its management.

Once housed in the Reserve Bank, the OIO has since 2005 been a part of Land Information New Zealand, the government agency charged with mapping New Zealand and ensuring land titles to secure property rights.

The office suffered serious embarrassment last April after it was revealed it had passed two Argentinian investors, Rafael and Federico Grozovsky, through its 'good character' test without realising they were the subject of criminal convictions in their home country for polluting a river with discharges of toxic chemicals.

A spokesperson for LINZ said there would be no comment on McClure's departure beyond the newsletter's noting that "during her time at LINZ, she has guided the OIO through some very challenging times" and wishing her well for the future.

Contacted for comment, McClure said the decision to leave was her own but offered no further comment.

"I really don't want to discuss it," she said.

The Labour Party's spokesman on Land Information, David Cunliffe, said: "There is no doubt, without commenting on individual public servants, that the OIO has been a shambles in the last few years and it remains to be seen whether the resourcing and management changes sort it out or are too little too late."

Ms Haines, a highly regarded public servant with broad experience in the state sector, was appointed a "short-term deputy chief executive" of LINZ last June, with a brief to focus on the OIO. Since McClure's departure, she is now acting leader of the OIO.

(BusinessDesk)