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Australian financial services industry publishing legend and good friend of Investment News NZ, Greg Bright, died last week after an accident.
Greg almost single-handedly invented the financial trade journalism genre in Australia with an extensive back catalogue dating back to Super Review, the still in-service title covering the superannuation sector across the Tasman.
In launching Super Review in the 1990s just as the compulsory retirement savings system was kicking off, Greg was, as usual, ahead of his time.
He departs well before his time.
At just 70, Greg was in the best shape of his life following more than four decades in the trenches of financial journalism, publishing and business, which are not professions historically associated with wellness.
It’s hard yakka; he deserved a break.
And for a little while, he got one.
“Going for a swim most days,” he told me last February. “And I bought a new electric lawnmower… The weekly highlight for me is Thursday night dinner at the Culburra Beach Bowlo. I have the seafood stirfry.”
During his 40-odd year career Greg created and sold at least four publishing businesses – mostly covering specialist finance subjects but he cut his teeth in the Australian film industry trade press with Encore.
Launched in 1983, Encore had a “tentative” start, he told the Australian media and marketing site, Mumbrella, in 2013.
“The problem at the start was mainly my inexperience as a publisher. I had been an assistant editor at the Australian Financial Review and economics writer for The Sydney Morning Herald. But a publisher requires other skills too.”
Greg acquired those skills quickly, putting the Encore lessons to good use again and again in a series of trade publishing ventures including one that made it to the ASX, InvestorInfo, which is where I entered the Bright universe.
During its brief but intense existence, InvestorInfo spawned many careers and friendships.
It says something about Greg that those friendships – and some of the mastheads – survived the demise of his company.
He was, of course, familiar to almost everyone in the Australian financial services industry but Greg was known in NZ, too, especially among those who have worked in the institutional investment world across both markets.
Investment News NZ was inspired by his example and for many years Greg was also a regular contributor to this publication until he sort-of retired last year to work on a book.
“I’m slowly progressing the book, re-writing and re-re-writing what I’ve written, although I keep telling myself not to,” he emailed me earlier this year. “Also still doing quite a few interviews as I go, which are the most enjoyable parts of the process I find.”
Last time I spoke to him, Greg said the book, a detailed account of his time in the Australian financial services sector, was at about 1,600 pages.
There should’ve been more to come.
Some time last year Greg went to an InvestorInfo reunion that he told me a friend of his thought “was the closest I’d ever come to attending my own funeral”.
Unfortunately, friends and family have to attend his real funeral this week. Investment News NZ will take an unscheduled break, returning for the Monday, September 16 edition.
Greg leaves behind his wife, Christine, as well as three children – Sophie, Phoebe and Eddie – from a former marriage; stepson Christian, daughter-in-law Tia and two grandchildren, Tayla and Toby.
And countless good friends.
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