Banking subsidiary has new finance manager

Gavin Berman has become finance manager at Dorchester Capital, the investment banking subsidiary of Dorchester Pacific Ltd. He is a graduate of the University of South Africa and worked in banking, property development, investment and sales in South Africa before moving to New Zealand.


* Stamford Plaza Auckland has appointed Claire Thoms business development manager, responsible for corporate and sports-related clients. She studied hotel management at the Central Institute of Technology in Wellington and worked in the hotel industry in Fiji, and with a Fiji radio station. She also ran her own corporate apparel business.

* Elizabeth Gollan is Trade New Zealand's new senior trade commissioner for North Asia. She has been trade commissioner and post manager in Paris, trade commissioner in Tokyo and assistant trade commissioner in Suva. Since 1996 she has worked in Christchurch as Trade New Zealand's regional business development manager.

* Symantech has promoted its business development manager Richard Batchelar to country manager. He has been with the company since 1996, working in site licence development and sales. Before joining Symantec, he was with SealCorp Computer Products and Data General NZ Ltd.

* Simpson Grierson has appointed nine new senior associates. They are Heather Ash (public law), Jacki Bryant and Angela Dutton (communications and technology), Juliet Dobson (employment law), Susan Hornsby (employment law and industrial relations), Paul Windeatt (taxes), Adrienne Wing (energy law and dispute resolution), Richard Bernau (commercial property and commercial law) and Helen Bartlett (financing).

* Former Countrywide Bank managing director David Wolfenden has become a director of Dunedin-based Frontline Finance Holdings Ltd.

* Ron Murray has become a senior consultant with Communication by Design. He has had 15 years in news media, agency and corporate communications, and was communications manager with the Health Funding Authority in Hamilton.