Alan Castleman

Alan Castleman is a widely experienced company chairman, director and executive, with fifteen years experience as a professional company director and fourteen years prior senior executive experience. Since late 2006 he has also been involved in Board Advisory and Director Search activities.

As a director he has served on the boards of some twenty-five companies or organisations and as chairman of fifteen of these, ranging from ASX listed, mutual, government owned and overseas owned companies, and a number of public sector or not for profit advisory boards.

His substantial experience covers many industries and he has extensive experience with corporate governance and management. He is skilled in managing sensitive relationships while taking tough positions and decisions when needed. His relevant personal skills in this regard are a highly developed capacity for understanding people, their personalities and issues, together with analytical talents and a strong capacity to communicate, persuade and lead.

His executive experience, ranging from finance to manufacturing to scientific and research management, and chief executive roles in challenging areas of development and change management, has allowed him to develop skills of value in all board situations.

His executive experience and board chairmanships have involved companies and organizations ranging from small to large, comfortable to highly stressed, private sector, public sector, and community and in a wide variety of industries. He has additionally served on a number of international and domestic industry bodies. These experiences have provided him with an unusually broad overview of industry and society and have contributed to his capacity as a speaker in public and private forums.

DETAILS OF EXECUTIVE AND BOARD EXPERIENCE

From late 1993 Alan has been a professional director with seventeen company boards, of which he has been chairman of ten, and eight advisory boards/taskforces of which he was chairman of five. His boards and chairmanships have included mining, technology, finance, manufacturing, marketing and research. They have included publicly listed companies, a major mutual, government owned companies, advisory boards and not for profit organisations. Whilst most of the board and chairman posts were fully commercial paid appointments, some of the appointments have been voluntary.

Since October 2006 he has been an Executive Director and Principal with the ProNed organisation involved in Board Search and Board Advisory services.

As a professional director and particularly chairman, he has gained considerable experience in the management of boards including their structuring. As mentioned, his board positions have covered a wide variety of businesses and have ranged from start-ups to established companies including some encountering financial stresses. During this period he was chairman of a company making a successful unfriendly takeover bid, and subsequently and successfully resisted a public unfriendly bid. He has also been involved as chairman in successful mergers and a friendly takeover.

As chairman he has had some situations where CEOs have been replaced with all the issues associated with these events.

His board directorships have complemented his executive roles to produce a seasoned, widely experienced and mature director.

Alan’s executive experience was principally in BHP. He joined the company as a financial analyst in 1969. From 1974-1980 he was Manager, Corporate Finance, a position perhaps more usefully understood as Deputy Treasurer for the BHP Group. From 1980-1988 he was Chief Financial Officer of the BHP Steel division/group with the title initially of Financial Controller and from 1984 General Manager, Finance. In the last 3 years of this appointment he also assumed line responsibility for the BHP subsidiary, Australian Industrial Refractories Limited which was the major refractory producer in Australia supplying both BHP and the wider market.

From 1988-1991 he was seconded to the Very Fast Train consortium as Chief Executive. When that project ended he returned to BHP for two years until late 1993 as Corporate General Manager, Strategic Development.

During his time with BHP Alan represented the company on several Boards and also as a member of the Executive of the ASEAN Australia Business Council.

In late 1993, he left BHP to begin his career as a professional director.