And it appears that ratepayers, who are the ultimate owners of the companies, will have to wait before they get much information on the issue.
Denham Shale was in Dunedin this week on what he said was a fact-finding mission.
He was sent a short list of questions late last week by the Otago Daily Times before the visit.
Those included what been done since the November 1 announcement of his new role, what still had to be done, whether there were enough local people with the experience to fill the required director roles, and whether he thought the companies could do better in terms of providing dividends and profits.
He was also asked if the directors who had lost their roles would receive payouts of any sort.
"I'm not going to answer the questions," Mr Shale said.
He had only been working as director for two weeks.
"I've been on a fact-gathering mission for that period," he said.
At the start of this month, the council got rid of the board of Dunedin City Holdings Ltd.
DCHL is the holding company for Aurora Energy, City Forests, Dunedin City Treasury, Delta Utility Services, Taieri Gorge Railway and Dunedin International Airport Ltd.
On November 1, Mayor Dave Cull announced Auckland-based Mr Shale and Bill Baylis, of Queenstown, had been hired to institute a major restructuring of the group.
A third person would be hired to complete the interim team of directors to put in place the recommendations of an independent report on DCHL written earlier this year by Warren Larsen.
The Larsen report, released in late July, revealed a multimillion-dollar annual shortfall in DCHL's planned dividend to the council.
It caused an angry debate between Mr Cull and former DCHL chairman Paul Hudson, who is also a city councillor, about communication between the council and the company.
The report recommended directors of subsidiary companies should not be directors of DCHL, and vice versa.
It also said directors should not serve on more than one subsidiary company.
It also recommended elected councillors and senior council staff should not hold board positions.
Mr Shale, a practising lawyer, is an accredited fellow of the Institute of Directors.
He is also a member of the directors' institute national council.
He said yesterday he had had "a couple of good discussions" in Dunedin.
But the directors would not be ready to make decisions until next year.
"We're doing our homework," he said.
That involved learning about the subsidiary companies.
Mr Shale did say he was "starting to put ideas together" in terms of the third director.
He said the company did have its annual meeting, necessary this year, about the same time as his position was announced on November 1.
Mr Shale had not been aware early this month that that meeting had taken place.
