Auckland Council chief financial officer Andrew McKenzie was named CFO of the Year in the 2013 New Zealand CFO Awards in Auckland tonight.

The judges described McKenzie as an astute CFO who thinks strategically and executes successfully because he is in tune with the local government environment, economic realities and people support required.

They said the scale of complexity of his task in managing the financial integration of eight councils into the single Auckland Council was without parallel in New Zealand.

He helped the new council achieve more than $81 million in operating efficiency savings in the 2011-12 financial year.

The judges - Jan Dawson, last year's CFO of the Year Nick Olson, and Beca's Chye Heng - also made a special commendation to Ngai Tahu CFO Allan Hickford, who is responsible for three businesses with about $1 billion in assets under management.  

The other finalist was Maureen Chrystall, CFO at the Waikato District Health Board, who the judges said was ''part best friend and part policeman'' in the complex and difficult world of a district health board.

Finance team of the Year went to the ANZ Bank, which the judges said was an excellent example of finance professionals who were certainly not a ''back office'' function but were ''neck-deep'' in the business.

Of particular note was its role in the integration of the core banking systems of the ANZ and National Bank, which involved the enormous task of bringing together 2.6 million customer records, 80 million transactions and $46b of funds migrated over one weekend.

IAG (NZ) won the Financial Innovation Project of the Year, with the judges  impressed by the team's ability to simultaneously manage multiple projects in a complex, high regulatory environment, including its acquisition of AMI and handling of its response to the Christchurch earthquakes.

Young Financial Manager of the Year went to Ben Doshi, CFO at a group of companies within Fisher Funds - Kingfish Ltd, Barramundi Ltd and Marlin Global Ltd.

The judges said that despite being appointed CFO aged just 27, Doshi displayed considerable understanding of the importance of good governance in publicly listed entities.

The awards are organised by Fairfax Media and Conferenz and sponsored by Ernst & Young 

- © Fairfax NZ News