KEY POINTS:
Economics may be known as the "dismal science", but there's little evidence it has cramped Adrian Orr's style.
Orr, who next month steps down as Reserve Bank deputy governor to head the New Zealand Superannuation Fund's management team, is a big man with an intellect and personality to match.
At the Reserve Bank he has helped to set New Zealand's monetary policy and overseen financial stability.
In his home town of Taupo, where he once drove trucks for a living, local iwi Tuwharetoa regard him as one of the family, as do the inhabitants of Atia in the Cook Islands, from where his grandfather emigrated to New Zealand in the 1930s.
Orr, who has been tipped as a future Reserve Bank governor, has been known to treat dinner guests to kai cooked in his backyard hangi pit.
This week he was keeping quiet about his new job. However, during his three years at the bank he has proved to be, if not as outspoken as he was as chief economist at Westpac and the National Bank, then accessible and willing to translate the bank's arcane and potentially dry work for journalists and the public.
"He's a very personable character," says Bronwyn Howell of Victoria University's Institute of Competition and Regulation studies, of which Orr was chairman until last year.
"When you're managing a large team of people you need to have good interpersonal communication skills and be able to put people at ease. He has demonstrated those skills and it's a style that works very well for him."
At the Reserve Bank's regular relationship-building lunches with the media, he was an entertaining host and raconteur. To illustrate how undeveloped the New Zealand debt market was a few years ago, he told reporters a story about a New Zealand bond trader who dozed off on the nightshift while taking an order over the phone from New York. The trader's snores were piped through the public address system of the Manhattan debt market trading room - to the hilarity of hundreds of other traders.
"One of the measures of how smart he is is that he can take complex and, let's face it, dry subjects like economics and financial markets and put them in terms everyday people can relate to and at the same time make it funny," says Leo Krippner, chief investment officer for AMP Capital Investors.
AMP was New Zealand's largest funds management business until the super fund surpassed it not that long ago. At over $11 billion now, the super fund is expected to grow to about $25 billion over the next five years, says fund chairman David May.
Orr is a seriously qualified and experienced economist who, apart from leading the economics teams at the Reserve, Westpac, and National banks, has also worked at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research and the Treasury.
"He's the next generation of a succession of very highly skilled, highly educated, well-trained economists in New Zealand ... I'm thinking of people like Allan Bollard and Roderick Deane," says Howell.
While obviously very smart, highly qualified and experienced in high-level economics, it may be seen by some as big leap for Orr to move into what May says is the top funds management job in the country.
"I think Adrian sees it as a leap," says May. "It is moving to a chief executive role, so he is completely in charge of the ship and it is a different type of role, focused on getting investment results.
"I would consider it to be a leap, but also a natural career progression and one he's ready for."
The fund has 40 relationships with outside suppliers, as well as "a very high-quality team of high-intellect individuals", says May.
"Just managing that becomes a bigger and bigger challenge - and managing it in a way you get all the checks and balances in place without losing the nimbleness and drive that have made us so successful to date.
"That requires some very peculiar types of skills, above all we were looking for a leader who could lead a group of highly skilled professionals."
May says Orr got the job against considerable competition from international candidates.
Says Krippner:"I think he's the right person for the job, they've made a very good appointment.
"Being a financial markets economist or a chief economist has often been a route into funds management."
Krippner says Orr's combination of academic strength, financial market experience and people management skills will serve him and the fund well.
Orr will lead a staff that includes former AMP men Paul Dyer and Tore Hayward - "between them I think they've got a very strong funds management team there".
According to a former Westpac and National Bank colleague, Orr's understanding of economics and financial markets "will be a tremendous strength to the fund".
"But he's also the type of person who's happy to seek expertise from experts in the field rather than pretending he's something he isn't," the colleague says. "He will have expert investment managers there making the day-to-day calls but I think his big-picture vision of things will be tremendously useful."
Howell says Orr's management skills are a particularly strong suit.
"Adrian has a long and ongoing commitment to not just the practice of management but the research of things that matter in relation to management, and particularly economics, in the New Zealand context.
"He's been a strong supporter in that role of ensuring that research is done in New Zealand that is of world-class level in order to help inform managers when they make very significant economic decisions."
While he has a strong record in academic and practical economics and management, he can also draw on broad experience outside those worlds.
After graduating from Waikato University in the early 1980s, he raised money to further his studies in Britain by driving a truck in Taupo by day and flipping burgers by night.
He maintains links with Taupo through his involvement with Tuwharetoa. While he recently stepped down from a formal funds management role for the iwi, he still has connections with the tribe, which he has described as "a big family".
Orr takes pride in his Pacific Island heritage and in 2001 was named Pacific Business Person of the Year. He has continued to be active in promoting the interests of Pacific Island people.
On top of all that, the father of three also finds time to coach swimming and children's rugby for Wellington's Poneke club.
His former Westpac and National Bank colleague recalls Orr found time to play rugby while with the OECD in Paris, and that he had a hangi pit in the backyard of his Wellington home.
He says Orr has "a rare blend of qualities".
"He's very very smart but he's very well grounded in real life. You quite often get people who are very smart but are abstract theoreticians, whereas he's very practical.
He also says Orr is "quite commercial".
When chief economist at National Bank, as a sideline he ran the Comrades chain of army surplus stores, importing goods from Eastern Europe.
While Orr's new role might, on the face of it, appear something of a departure from a career track tipped by some to be heading towards the Reserve Bank's top job, his old colleague doesn't agree.
"This is just a zig-zag, not necessarily a sideways move. I wouldn't rule him out. This step up to be chief executive of the fund could add some strength."
Says Krippner: "I think he'd make a very good governor of the Reserve Bank if he was so inclined. He always seemed to have pushed the agenda along at any institution he's been in, he always makes a difference wherever he goes."
Adrian Orr
* Age: 44
* Married to Sue
* Three children
* Grew up in Taupo
Education
* Waikato University, BA, double major in economics and geography
* Leicester University, MA in economics
* London City University, business school researcher and teacher
Career
* New Zealand Institute for Economic Research
* National Bank economist
*Economist with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris
* Analyst at Treasury
* 1997 National Bank's chief economist
* 1997-2000 Reserve Bank head economist
* 2000-2003 Westpac chief economist
* 2003-2007 Reserve Bank deputy governor and head of financial stability
* 2007 Chief executive of the Guardians of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund
Interests
* Coaching kids' rugby, swimming
