After 12 years, Norah Barlow (pictured) has elected to retire from NZ's Summerset, effective early next year.

She took over leadership of Summerset when it was just four years old; it is now the third largest village operator in New Zealand with 2,200 residents and stock exchange capitalisation of $650M – all from a population 20% the size of Australia.

Under her leadership Summerset has been strongly supported by Australian private equity and institutional investors. She is remaining on the Board. Norah has been a regular and generous Australian conference speaker.

Julian Cook, the current Chief Financial Officer, has been appointed CEO. He has been CFO for three years, following 11 years at Macquarie Bank.