{"id":379882,"date":"2026-04-15T01:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T01:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/379882\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T01:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T01:33:08","slug":"fresh-probe-into-handling-of-former-xero-chief-executive-sir-rod-drury-misconduct-complaint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/379882\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresh probe into handling of former Xero chief executive Sir Rod Drury misconduct complaint"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe have retained external counsel Maria Dew, KC to assist us in undertaking a review of these matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company was \u201ccommitted to maintaining a safe, inclusive and respectful environment for all our people\u201d.<\/p>\n
An investigation has been launched into misconduct allegations against Sir Rod Drury. Photo \/ Mike Scott<\/p>\n
Stuff reported misconduct matters were first raised while Drury was chief executive of Xero and Naylor was an employee, in the mid-2010s. <\/p>\n
Naylor who lives in Napier, left the company in 2017. She refreshed her claims after seeing Drury win the country\u2019s top community award.<\/p>\n
She claimed Drury invited her to his apartment, which was across the road from the Xero office, on multiple occasions in the context of work-related meetings, where he allegedly behaved inappropriately towards her. <\/p>\n
She told Stuff the first event happened as she was leaving after accepting an invitation to dinner.<\/p>\n
Ally Naylor alleges Drury acted inappropriately with her while she was a junior Xero employee. Photo \/ Rafaella Melo<\/p>\n
\u201cAs he was walking me to the door he kind of like stopped the door and was like, \u2018I just really want to kiss you\u2019, and I was like um sorry no.. this is just like a lot for my head.\u201d <\/p>\n
Stuff reported Naylor first raised concerns in a conversation with her boss in 2016, who suggested she speak to the company\u2019s HR.<\/p>\n
But she decided against taking formal action as she was a solo mother and feared for her career progression. <\/p>\n
In 2017 on her last day of employment, Naylor wrote a formal complaint to Xero saying \u201cit\u2019s hard to put into words how this has impacted me emotionally\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a range of emotions from shame, confusion, fear, to anger and hopelessness. Hopelessness because of the power imbalance between the CEO and me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a phone call with Stuff, Drury said he did not want to talk about Naylor.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything is private between people,\u201d he said, \u201cAnd I think she was a great employee and a really good person.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Herald has approached Dew and Drury for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe have retained external counsel Maria Dew, KC to assist us in undertaking a review of these matters.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9092,26676,138,3937,1656,12797,114704,9948,3938,9787,2740,8456,52096,296,26588,1743,11518,111,139,69,1118,28758,762,89970,8485,370,86495],"class_list":{"0":"post-379882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-against","9":"tag-allegations","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-chief","12":"tag-company","13":"tag-complaint","14":"tag-drury","15":"tag-employee","16":"tag-executive","17":"tag-female","18":"tag-former","19":"tag-fresh","20":"tag-handling","21":"tag-into","22":"tag-junior","23":"tag-launched","24":"tag-misconduct","25":"tag-new-zealand","26":"tag-newzealand","27":"tag-nz","28":"tag-of","29":"tag-probe","30":"tag-review","31":"tag-rod","32":"tag-sir","33":"tag-tech","34":"tag-xero"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}