NBN Co adds more McKinsey alumni to board

Network builder NBN Co has appointed two more directors to the board, yet another of whom is a former director of secretive consulting group McKinsey and Company.

Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy announced today that  former McKinsey director Clem Doherty and banking executive Terence Francis would join five other execs on NBN Co's board.

Doherty retired as a director of McKinsey & Company in 1996 after 17 years with the organisation. In his most recent post, he led the group's telecommunications, electronics and media sector and was also a joint leader of McKinsey's global group of partners addressing the telecommunications sector.

Doherty is one of three executives out of the seven employed on the NBN Co boards that are former directors or partners of McKinsey and Company.

In August, the Federal Government announced that former McKinsey partner Siobhan McKenna and Diane Smith-Gander had joined the NBN Co board, on the same day McKinsey and KPMG was awarded a $25 million contract to advise NBN Co chair Mike Quigley on strategy.

Francis, meanwhile, was formerly the managing director of Australian operations for the Bank of America, an executive director of Deutsche Bank Australia and Vice President of Continental Illinois National Bank.

The McKinsey connection

McKinsey and Company is one of the world's most powerful strategic consultancy groups.

Notable former employees included former IBM chief executive officer Louis Gerstner and disgraced former Enron chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling.

Former Australian employees included: Nigel Dews (chief executive officer of VHA, formerly Hutchison 3); former National Office of the Information Economy and Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers president Paul Twomey; LookSmart co-founder and now Better Place Australia chief executive officer Evan Thornley and former Fairfax chief executive officer Fred Hilmer who is now UNSW vice-chancellor.