Dr Alan Bollard
Alan Bollard (CNZM; PhD Auck FRSNZ) is a Professor of Practice at the Wellington School of Business and Government and inaugural Chair for Pacific Region Business, Victoria University of Wellington.
Alan is also the Chair of the Infrastructure Commission, Chair of the cross-university Centres for Asia-Pacific Excellence, and Chair of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. He is NZ Governor of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia.
Previously, Alan was the Director of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research 1987-1994; Chairman of the New Zealand Commerce Commission from 1994 to 1998; and was the Secretary to the Treasury between 1998 and 2020.
Between 2002 and 2012 Alan was the Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. During this time he was responsible for monetary policy and bank regulations, helping steer New Zealand through the global financial crisis. After two five-year terms as Governor, Alan left the Reserve Bank to become the executive director of the APEC Secretariat based in Singapore.
Alan was the first Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to serve two terms from 2012 to 2018. The APEC is the world’s largest regional body that promotes trade, investment and sustainable economic growth in the Asia-Pacific. While at the APEC he saw a large increase in trade between Asia and the Pacific open up, a period when a large number of people were helped out of poverty, and the implications of this in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
He wrote a best-selling account of the GFC called Crisis: One Central Bank Governor and the Global Financial Collapse. He has published several novels: The Rough Mechanical and The Code-cracker and the Tai Chi Dancer. He has also written a biography of famous economist Bill Phillips, and a popular economics book Economists at War.
In 2012 Alan was honoured as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He is a Fellow of the NZ Royal Society. He also has honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Auckland and Massey University.