John Connolly - Director

John Connolly is one of the world’s most experienced public relations professionals with 40 years of consulting to and working for some of the world’s largest companies and organisations.

Prior to establishing John Connolly & Partners in 1992, John was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Asia Pacific operations of the world’s largest public relations firm. He was a member of the board of directors and the five-person executive committee of the New York-based worldwide firm.

In the early 1990s, faced by severe constraints on their ability to operate because of growing community pressure and the emerging environmental movement, some of the world’s largest resource companies funded him to research new approaches to rebuilding trust and credibility and to increasing organisational autonomy. Through this work he has developed a unique approach around rebuilding and restoring corporate reputation and the development of the corporate brand concept.

That ground-breaking work has now been applied in the US, Canadian and Australian financial services sectors, with corporations rebuilding after serious financial and operational crises and with retail investors in major proxy fights.

As a result, John was the only non-US citizen to be a member of an internal committee of the New York Stock Exchange advising the Exchange committee on corporate branding and implementation for 10 years. He moved from the NYSE to become a member of the global branding committee of Bristol Myers Squibb in New York. He was a founding member of the branding committee of the Australian Stock Exchange and acts as an independent expert on the subject in litigation, including recently before the Federal Court of Australia.

His work in public affairs and investor relations is recognised internationally. He was the first non-US citizen to address the National Investor Relations Institute of the United States and he has worked on some of the most difficult issues in public affairs and financial and public relations for a range of US, UK and Australian corporations. These include advising both sides on mergers leading to the creation of two of the world’s largest mining companies; the head office relocation from Australia to the US of the world’s largest media group; the demergers of two of the world’s largest companies; leading global communications for one of the world’s largest hostile takeovers; the campaign against the introduction of a minerals resource rent tax in Australia; the acquisition of NYMEX by a US private equity group; and major public affairs issues in Indonesia, New Zealand, the UK, the US and China.

He set up and led the Governing Bodies of International Tennis in London in developing their response to issues affecting the sport.

John is the only non-lawyer to regularly address the International Bar Association and has been a keynote speaker at the IBA biennial conferences in New York and Cannes. He speaks internationally on investor relations and financial markets. He was a guest speaker at the Public Relations Society of America Counsellor Academy in Palm Springs, he spoke at the first Brazilian Companies in the Global Market conference in Rio de Janeiro, the 2018 ICCO Global Summit in Dublin, and was the opening speaker at the 2017 Australasian Investor Relations Association (AIRA) Conference.

In 2020, the Australian Institute of Company Directors asked John to develop the communication tools for boards on COVID-19 which have been published on the AICD website.

John wrote and delivered the initial Securities Institute of Australia course on Corporate Strategy and its Impact on Equity Analysis, which was the highest ranked component of any part of the curriculum.  He has been a contributing editor to a range of publications and writes a weekly column for The Weekend Australian and a monthly column for The Deal magazine.

John was a director of the Sydney Theatre Company for ten years and  was now a director of Sydney Theatre Company Foundation. He is an International Delegate-at-Large for the Public Relations Society of America and member of the council of leaders of the US-based Issues Exchange. Previously, he was a member of the council of the International Public Relations Association.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (FAICD), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the American Association of Trial Consultants, the American Association for Justice, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (UK), the Legal Marketing Association (US), Financial Services Institute of Australasia, the National Investor Relations Institute of the USA, the American Association of Political Consultants, the Australian Racing Drivers Club, the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport and is a founding committee member of the Tarmac Rally Competitors Association of Australia.

Connect with John on Linkedin