Alan Kohler is embarking on a new journalistic adventure, as editor in chief of digital wealth platform, InvestSMART, following the merger of its Eureka Report publishing business, which Kohler founded in 2005, with Kohler's new publishing business, The Constant Investor. Industry Moves asks Alan about the merger and about his career so far - the highlights and the lowlights. He also reveals his hidden talents, his view on financial literacy in schools and why we need an alternative to APRA.
Alan Kohler is embarking on a new journalistic adventure, as editor in chief of digital wealth platform, InvestSMART, following the merger of its Eureka Report publishing business, which Kohler founded in 2005, with Kohler's new publishing business, The Constant Investor. Industry Moves asks Alan about the merger and about his career so far - the highlights and the lowlights. He also reveals his hidden talents, his view on financial literacy in schools and why we need an alternative to APRA.
Well, Ron Hodge [InvestSMART CEO] took me out to lunch and his idea of putting The Constant Investor together with my first start-up, Eureka Report, appealed to me enormously. It was a compelling proposal for subscribers of both publications.
Facebook and Google and the online classified businesses have more or less destroyed the business of print and online advertising, so media companies must ask their customers to pay. They understand this now and are working hard to make it happen, but it's difficult since there is so much content available for free. I really don't know where the media is heading.
Many highlights: being appointed editor of The Australian Financial Review and The Age; reporting on the floating of the Australian dollar and all the other economic reforms of the 80s and 90s; creating and then fronting the Inside Business programme on the ABC; starting Eureka Report and then Business Spectator; being inducted into the Media Hall of Fame; starting The Constant Investor.
When I need more than five takes to nail the nightly ABC News finance spot.
Because the regulators weren't regulating. All industries need regulating to some extent. With the banks, the regulator - APRA - was constitutionally more concerned with the stability of the system than with the how the banks were treating customers. In my view, APRA threw customers under the bus.
A separate regulator, not APRA, needs to focus on bank customers, as opposed to the banks themselves.
Perhaps. Far better would be a trustworthy financial advice industry. We don't learn medicine at school because we don't need to - we trust doctors to look after us. The same needs to happen with finance.
Use the power of compound interest. Start saving early and stick with it.
I'm very good at chucking Frisbees, and I can read our Labrador, Maisy's, mind. I know when she's hungry.