BANK OF NEW ZEALAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 8

BANK OF NEW ZEALAND

MR. GIBBS AS CHAIRMAN SHAREHOLDERS’ REPRESENTATIVE. WELLINGTON April 7. Mr. Richard Waine Gibbs, a director of the Bank of New Zealand, representing shareholders’ interests on the board, was to-day unanimously elected chairman in succession to Mr. Oliver Nicholson, of Auckland. Mr. Gibbs is a resident of Wellington and a banker of practically lifelong experience in his profession, for he joined the service of the Bank of New Zealand at Nelson in 1877. He subsequently opened up branches of the bank at Wakeficd, Takaka, and Motueka. Later, Mr. Gibbs was transferred to the head office of the Bank of New Zealand, then in Auckland, and he was accountant there during the exacting years of the nineties. Mr. Gibbs was next engaged on inspection duties for the bank over a number of years, until his promotion as manager of the Timaru, and next of the Dunedin, branches of the bank. In 1919 Mr. Gibbs was appointed by the Government as chief auditor of the Bank of New Zealand, and thus he became a Government officer. But the arrangements in connection with this important post provide that, although the Government fixes the salary of the chief auditor, the bank has to provide it. Mr. Gibbs filled this position until 1924, when he resigned to contest a bank as a shareholders’ director, of which there are two, Mr. William Watson being at present the other director., The board consists of six members, four of whom are appointed by the Government. Although Mr Gibbs was born in London and educated at Kensington Grammar School, he may be regarded as a Nelsonian, for when a boy he arrived in Nelson in the seventies with his mother and eight other young children, and. he began his business career in that city. As a matter of fact the Gibbs family nearly did not arrive at all. They sailed from England for New Zealand in the barque Queen Bee, which, after a passage lasting some four months, reached this country, but went ashore on Farewell Spit, where she broke up. After three days and nights in an open boat Mrs. Gibbs and her family landed, at D’Urville Island, where they found sanctuary among the Maoris. Mr. Gibbs has long been identified with the business life of Wellington, as well as actively engaged in banking, and he is a director of the Gear Meat Company and the Wellington Trust and Loan, His long first-hand experience of the economic and financial conditions of New Zealand, and his association with the Bank of New Zealand for some 55 years, should prove of great value to the bank in the existing conditions of the Dominion.