Gunther Burghardt

Gunther Burghardt is the Reg. Finance Director, APAC & EMEA at Treasury Wine Estates and one of the first of our Centre Fellows to become an Executive-in-Residence.

After finishing a BBA (Finance) in 1993 in his home country of Canada, Gunther Burghardt began an 18-year career focusing on fast-moving consumer goods finance by taking up a role with Procter & Gamble. He spent four years with P & G working in the cities of Toronto and Hamilton and has experience in the paper products and health and beauty care sectors, working on brands such as Pantene and Pampers. Gunther then accepted his first international assignment with Reckitt Benckiser and started a decade-long series of roles with the company which saw him live and work in Poland, Slovenia, Africa / Middle-East and the UK.

Four years later Foster's recruited Gunther to take financial responsibility for their supply operations globally and he moved with his family to Melbourne. Foster's restructured its business in 2009 to enable separate focus and accountability in its Beer and Wine businesses and Gunther was given the role of Finance Director for ANZ Wine. Foster's ANZ Wine business is the region's largest marketer of wine with brands such as Penfolds, Wolf Blass, Lindemanns, and Rosemount. Shortly after the demerger of the two companies occurred, Gunther accepted a role at Kraft Foods as the Head of Snacking Finance and was appointed a few months later as Finance Director for Kraft ANZ. Brands such as Cadbury and Vegemite are among Australia's most trusted, and with University of Melbourne students well-positioned to steward these important franchises in the future Gunther is eager to share ideas with both students and faculty as part of the CAIP program.

In his free time Gunther enjoys downhill skiing, fine food and wine and a good game of poker.

Seminars

Seminar 1 - This wide ranging presentation covered the "hot issues in Foster's" in each of their four sub-disciplines – Management Accounting, Business and Information Systems, Audit and Financial Accounting

Case study - The Coors Brewery Case
Gunther's presentation concentrated on a teaching case titled Coors Brewing which focused on the dilemmas facing an organisation through the implementation of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC).

Downloads

Celebrating luminaries in the field of accounting by Gunther Burghardt
To entice our youth in the future to enter the important profession of accounting, we need to tell the inspirational stories of the discipline's pioneers and we need to tell them well and often.
INSIGHTS Volume 16, 2014