Q1. What drove you to choose a career path in journalism? Some people seem to know when they are very young what they want to be. Were you one of these lucky people?
I always enjoyed studying english at school and that included writing, so journalism was one of a few career considerations. I started studying arts/economics at uni to ensure I had different career options, but after the first year it was pretty clear to me that journalism was my career path.
Q2. Has writing always come easy to you? Were you a bookish student?
As per the above question – yes. I enjoyed writing from an early age. I was somewhat of a bookish student but also enjoyed playing a lot of sports including netball, touch football and volleyball in my younger years.
Q3. What was the experience like working in the Parliamentary press gallery in Canberra? It must have been an interesting first job. Any stories anecdotes from this time that you are ok to share?
It was certainly a buzzing place to start my journalistic career – and particularly as I was just there part time – while completing my university degree. The press gallery is a very dynamic and competitive environment where reporters live and breathe politics and you do tend to learn on the job very quickly!
A few highlights while working there included attending John Howard’s Christmas drinks at The Lodge, covering the Y2K changeover at a response centre in Canberra and seeing Peter Costello on the dance floor at the press gallery mid winter ball. I was also involved in covering key reforms to the financial services sector in the early 2000s, which certainly taught me a lot!
Q4.Your path within journalism has been in finance/banking. This interest clearly goes back to studying economics at the ANU. What drew you to this field of journalism?
As well as enjoying writing at school, I had a keen interest in business and economics. That probably stemmed somewhat from my dad’s entrepreneurialism and also an interest in finance. Because of that, I think business/financial journalism was always a natural fit for me. I also remember early in my career, a wise senior reporter advising me the pay was generally better in business journalism and specialisation was very important. I think he was right!
Q5. You reported on the collapse of the Lehman Brothers when you were working for Bloomberg in London. That must have been an interesting, exciting time…
Working in London during the GFC was an exciting, but also frightening time. Depositors rushing to get their money out of banks, a crisis of confidence, many rounds of job losses and bank collapses were commonplace in 2008. I was at the Lehman building the morning of its collapse and staff were confused and shocked at what had transpired. A few hours later many were leaving the building with boxes of their belongings. I knew several Lehman bankers who were hit hard by this period, even though Nomura ended up buying some of the firm’s European operations.
Q6. You spent two years as a joint Street Talk editor for the Financial Review. What is a Street Talk editor? What was this experience like?
Street Talk is one of the Financial Review’s marquee columns. It focuses on takeovers, deals, ASX floats and other investment banking news. The column centres on breaking information about these deals before its publicly available. The Australian has a similar column called Dataroom.
My time on Street Talk was stressful – but overall a great learning experience – about the cut and thrust of dealmaking.
Q7. You joined The Australian in 2018 as a senior banking writer and columnist. Being a regular columnist, you have to come up with new ideas all the time. Is that difficult?
Coming up with ideas is a key part of journalism but it is often difficult when you are also working in a busy news cycle, with relentless daily deadlines! In a good week, I start thinking about column ideas early and try to try and build up a file of points and context that will help. In other weeks, when there is a lot of banking news around – it certainly becomes more difficult.
Q8. What was the experience like reporting on the banking royal commission? Do you think that the banks are more interested in their shareholders than the ordinary Joe who has an account with them?
The banking royal commission was a startling period and although I expected scandals, I wasn’t prepared for the level of egregious behaviour that came to light. Charging fees for no service and fees to dead people, and then for many banks sweeping the matter under the carpet was just shocking! The pressure selling tactics on funeral and other forms of insurance were also terrible as they preyed on vulnerable people in particular.
While the banks do tend to put their shareholders’ interests first, the royal commission was a wake up call that customer relationships are important alongside governance and compliance with the law and regulations. The big four banks, Macquarie and AMP have had to pay out billions in customer compensation – as a group – for the misdeeds of the past. Hopefully there won’t be a repeat of that behaviour.
Q9. What do you think of the current state of capitalism? Do companies really care about people or is it all profit driven? There is a saying Moses is Moses and Business is Business. Is this the reality of the business world?
Australian companies are increasingly more aware that they have a social licence to operate and that while profit is a big motivator, they can’t lose sight of customers and the broader environment in which they operate. For the banks the royal commission underscored that they needed to treat customers in a fair manner, even as they pursue profits and earnings growth.
Q10. What was the experience of working on the Macquarie Bank book like? What was the experience co-authoring your first book?
Writing a book about Macquarie was a huge task involving delving into more than 50 years of corporate history. Given the company’s sprawling global operations, it was great to have worked jointly with Chris Wright (who is based in Singapore) on the book. Given it was my first book, I also got a lot of assistance from Chris (who has written two books before The Millionaires’ Factory) on style and structuring.
It was also a rewarding and exciting process writing a book about Macquarie. As we researched the history and spoke to more than 130 current and former staff, we learned a lot about how the ethos of the bank emerged and how it navigated various challenges and scandals along the way.
There were colourful characters, turf fights, successes and failures and needless to say bumper profits and pay packets! We also conducted road trips to visit assets owned by Macquarie and this was among the highlights of the process as Chris and I came to understand just how diverse the company’s reach is.
For example, I visited assets including a waste-to-energy plant, wind farm, disability housing, airport and train station, as part of my road trip.
