Queen's Birthday Honour

Congratulations to Mr William Anthony (Tony) Caughey ACIS who has been appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education and business.

Mr Tony Caughey was a Trustee of the Young Enterprise Trust for 21 years and served the last 11 years as Chairman before retiring  in 2013. Over the course of Mr Caughey's 21 year involvement almost 750,000 students benefitted from Young Enterprise programmes. Many new programmes were launched, including the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame in 1994. He was instrumental in campaigning for the Ministry of Education to bring enterprise and business studies into the school curriculum.

Since his work on the 1991 report 'Upgrading New Zealand's  Competitive Advantage' he has been an advocate for building New Zealand's  competitiveness in a wide range of forums.

From 2005 he was a Trustee of the Play it Strange Trust, encouraging school students in music and songwriting, and has been Chairman since 2007.

Mr Caughey is a long serving Director of the Presbyterian Savings and Development Society and is the Chairman of the Kohimarama Presbyterian Church Trust.

In addition to the activities for which he has been recognised, Mr Caughey currently holds and has held in the past, directorships of a number of companies.

He is also the Chairman of the retail department store business of Smith and Caughey Ltd.