Sun sets on the Bill Day Show
The Wellington entrepreneur is preparing to sell up, learn Italian, and repay his family for the years of financial instability as he chased his dreams
Tuesday, July 06 2010 || Features || BY Keri Welham
As does the man stretching back with his arms behind his head, legs flung over the arm of a chair, in his office in a fairly ramshackle building on Wellington’s waterfront. He is fidgety, casual, mischievous.
But get Bill Day talking, and he starts to sound more and more like a member of the business establishment. He mentions, in passing, his reluctance to pursue the potential political career that undoubtedly beckons.
He says of the Business Roundtable: “It’s nice to contribute, a nice way to engage politically.”
He has been with the organisation about eight years. It has a membership of 60 to 70. Entry is invitation only but Day insists the organisation is inclusive and entrepreneurs are certainly not excluded. Day was one of the first entrepreneurs in the organisation, and many more have followed.
Business Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr says Day, in his capacity as vice-chair, has helped the roundtable brand itself as a more entrepreneurial organisation than many might have expected. He helps illustrate that the Business Roundtable of today is not just interested in one kind of businessman or woman, namely the hired guns at the top of major listed companies, but is there to progress the interests of business in New Zealand in general.
Day says the organisation offers chief executives companionship with others facing similar challenges or responsibilities. “A lot of CEOs are actually quite lonely. There are some things you can’t talk about with your staff.”
