Straight down to business

Credit where credit is due – in this case to the FPA conference organisers, under Jo- Anne Bloch’s leadership.

It was only a few years ago I sat in a darkened room with Dancing with the Stars’ Todd McKenny and 100 school kids belting out patriotic numbers at nine in the morning. This “entertainment” went on for 45 minutes.

At the recent FPA conference in Sydney it was straight down to business. The program was heav­ily education-orientated, and the vibe of the entire event was a long way removed from a junket.

Even the fund managers showed restraint in their exhibition and entertainment. With the excep­tion of one degustation dinner at Tetsuya (attended by Professional Planner!), fund managers gener­ally kept their spending to sensible levels, unlike the sometimes obscene amounts splurged on schmooz­ing in the past.

We have received a lot of mail since our launch, much of it questioning our selection of columnists, especially Alan Kohler and Garry Weaven. I thought long and hard before inviting them to contribute to Professional Planner, fully expecting each to provoke a fair share of criticism. I have not been surprised, but some of the criticism is misguided.

Alan is arguably one the strongest advocates of professionalism in financial planning. He is consid­ered by some an enemy of financial planners – but this is not the case. He is interested in consumers receiving quality advice, at fair value, and in them knowing what it costs.

He talks intelligently on business issues in vari­ous high profile media and regularly engages the na­tion’s top CEOs and business figures. It seems im­portant to me that industries embrace the views of people like Alan, who enjoy a broad view of business and investment issues. Alan’s columns are worth reading – they are not just a rant against financial planners and commissons.

We are all part of a thriving industry, thanks in large part to Garry. Along with former ACTU Sec­retary Bill Kelty and former Prime Minister Paul Keating, Garry oversaw the establishment of com­pulsory super and was instrumental in setting up industry superannuation funds to provide super for lower-paid workers.

Together, these events drive our adviser commu­nity and the nation’s savings and have underwritten the growth of institutional fund managers.

Garry is a brilliant strategic thinker, and will write on broad issues of significance to your world, from both an Australian and an international per­spective.

As we go to press, Centro Property group is crashing down. Second only to Westfield in the number of shopping centres it owns, Centro differs from Westfield in at least one key respect: its capi­tal raising. It’s notable that yet again, here is a debt-ridden enterprise, which almost exclusively raised its funds by aggressively marketing unit trusts via financial planners.

It will be interesting again to see what fall-out will be created for the reputations of financial planners from this latest casualty of the sub-prime crisis.

This month we welcome several new recruits to Professional Planner, starting with Simon Hoyle as editor. Early in his career Simon was part of the team that founded trade magazine Money Manage­ment, and did a stint as that publication’s editor. He spent more than 10 years at the Australian Financial Review, where he was deputy investment editor and editor of the paper’s Smart Money personal finance section. For the past five years he’s been an invest­ment writer for The Sydney Morning Herald, and will continue his regular feature on investing in the Saturday Herald.

Joining Simon is senior journalist Kristen Paech, who has recently returned to Australia from four years in the UK. Kristen has written for The Financial Times and various financial services trade publications. She was deputy editor at institution­al finance magazine Global Pensions. Kristen also worked on the news desks at Dow Jones-owned Fi­nancial News, Global Investor, Investment Adviser and Funds Europe.

And finally, Professional Planner has a dedicated National Advertising Manager in Rebekah Kittl. Rebekah has previously worked at The Australian and Reed Business Publishing. Most recently, she worked at Hardie Grant Magazines, managing the Mercedes customer magazine, and Small Wonders, a publication of ABC Learning Centres.

Together, these appointments, and those still to come, demonstrate a commitment to covering our industry accurately, in depth and, hopefully, with some insight.

I trust you will enjoy this issue of Professional Planner, and I look forward to your constructive feedback.

Colin Tate

colin.tate@conexusfinancial.com.au