Pacific Fibre names CFO, charged with chasing $US350m

Pacific Fibre has appointed its first CFO: Michael Gleissner.

Company co-founder Lance Wiggs told NBR that Mr Gleissner would be "responsible for driving the process to raise the estimated US$350 million required to build the cable."

Mr Gleissner comes to Pacific Fibre from Sealord Group, where he was CFO.

In his role at the international fishing group, which has  revenue of around $500 million revenue company, Mr Gleissner led several acquisitions and a divestiture and secured substantial funding facilities from a group of international banks.

He was previously Group Strategy and Business Development Manager, leading Sealord’s M&A strategy and portfolio investments.

Before Sealord, Mr Gleissner was with Fonterra Group where his responsibilities included leading group M&A activity and coordinating and leading to completion several business development opportunities.

His early career was as a solicitor with Russell McVeagh and Slaughter and May. He has an MBA from Otago, winning the award for highest level of achievement, and an LLB (Honours) from the University of Leeds

Pac man
Pacific Fibre has also appointed a Business Development Director, Mike Constable.

Mr Constable will run the company's RFP process, negotiate with vendors and lead the build of the cable system. He was formerly with Pacnet, and has 16 years experience in the submarine cable industry. Mike returns home to New Zealand to add his expertise to the project.

At Pacnet (among other things, a the largest Southern Cross Cable wholsaler), Mr Constable was Director of Business Development.

He expanded their submarine cable infrastructure, played the key role in developing and implementing the Unity /EAC Pacific cable, and led Pacnet’s vendor engagement on the West Asia Crossing cable, which will connect Singapore and India. 

Mr Constable has also had project management, commercial and strategic roles with companies including Fugro Survey, Alcatel Submarine Networks and Global Crossing. While at Global Crossing, he held a key role in developing and implementing the company’s submarine infrastructure programme, connecting over 20 countries across four continents in just over four years, and also initiated a team to manage the regulatory aspects of these multi-jurisdictional projects.

He holds an undergraduate degree from Otago University and an MBA from Henley Management College, UK.

Both men start Monday.

Backed by Rich Listers Sam Morgan, Rod Drury and Sir Stephen Tindall, Pacific Fibre aims to lay cable between Sydney, Auckland and LA.

The Sydney-Auckland leg would break the 50% Telecom-owned Southern Cross Cable's long-held monopoly.

"It's hard to believe that Pacifc Fibre was still behind the scenes a year ago," Mr Wiggs told NBR.

"The appointment of a CFO is an important step as we move towards engaging with our targeted investors for the final round."