Boardroom discussions

Laying the groundwork 

Born in Argentina, Nora was aged three when her parents moved to Australia. She loved words and language and originally thought she would be a speech therapist, but, encouraged by her brother, opted for law instead. 

As part of her law degree, Nora took a course in natural resources law. One summer, she did an internship with CRA (which later became Rio Tinto) and was enthralled by the concept of project financing. She would have trained with CRA, but her boss persuaded her that it would be better for her to train with a law firm. 

She did her training (then, “articles”) with a predecessor firm of Herbert Smith Freehills, learning at the feet of Mark Fairbairn and Keith Skinner, who was the senior partner of the firm, both of whom were “genuinely caring and nurturing, as well as being outstanding lawyers. I have to say my legal training was foundational and has proved to be enormously useful.” 

After one year’s post-qualification experience, Nora joined CRA full-time in their legal function. That took her on deals all over the world, which she found immensely satisfying. Following a merger of the legal departments of CRA and another company, Comalco, she was keen to pursue transactional work and opted to leave the law and start a career in investment banking. 

This was in the early 1980s, just as Australia was opening up its financial services market to foreign banks. After a spell at Hill Samuel which straddled the bank morphing into Macquarie Bank, she joined Chase AMP, which was a joint venture between Chase Manhattan Bank and the AMP Society. After that, she was recruited to head the Asia Pacific Project Finance Group at Deutsche Bank. When the project finance unit was moved into Bain, the broking company which Deutsche had acquired and up to Sydney, Nora left the bank. 

By then, Nora was working on a PhD on the subject of debt and equity risk in project financings. It was eventually published by Euromoney as Rethinking Project Finance: Allocating and Mitigating Risk in Australasian Projects. 

First NED appointments 

Come the 1990s, the state of Victoria was embarked on a programme of privatisation of utilities. One ministerial adviser had heard Nora speak at a conference and invited her to join the board of one of the utilities, Eastern Energy, an electricity company. From that, she was asked to chair one of the gas companies and her non-executive director career was up and running. 

Since then, Nora has served on boards of a huge range of companies (and that is no exaggeration), acquiring a reputation for her no-nonsense, thoughtful and practical guidance. “I guess I’ve become known to outsiders, investors, proxy advisers and others as someone who doesn’t spin, who’s very open, who listens, and who takes feedback on board. Above all, I’ve always tried to follow the path of doing the right thing for the companies that is fair for all stakeholders,” Nora says. 

Nora sees being a non-executive director as having an influencing role. NEDs sit one step removed from the executive, bringing an outside perspective with the onus on them to question and challenge what the executives are doing. “We are not doers, but we need to make sure we can enhance the ability of the doers to do.” 

To that end, she believes that it is vital for boards to include people with a range of interests and experiences – in other words, to be diverse. “Gender diversity is a no-brainer,” Nora says, “but what is also required for boards to be effective is to be represented by people who bring a range of diverse perspectives, from background, career, educational discipline and life experience.” 

She continues: “You want people who come at the issues from different perspectives, but fundamentally share the same values. That can lead to challenging debates and tough conversations, but, ultimately, can be amazing experiences.”