Fran O'Sullivan: Brian Gaynor - A champion of investors and journalists

Brian Gaynor spent his working life in New Zealand, but retained a passion for all things Irish. Photo / NZME

OPINION:

Brian Gaynor's love affair with journalism was a sustaining passion that lasted well beyond the days when I invited him to become my star financial columnist.

As Brian wrote in his departing column from the Herald on December 21, 2019, "It all began in January 1995 when Fran O'Sullivan, who was then editor of the National Business Review, asked me to write a weekly column for her publication. I jumped at the opportunity because I was angry that we had sold the Bank of New Zealand for a proverbial song with almost no opposition from the investment community.

"I was also enraged that the then National Government wasn't being held to account for its reluctance to endorse a Takeovers Code, which would protect minority shareholders when changes in company control occurred."

I was proud to be Brian's first editor.

His wasn't a universally popular appointment.

The chair of the Business Roundtable at the time, the late Sir Douglas Myers — a passionate proponent of free markets — had a major fit that Brian had secured a weekly platform on NBR from which to excoriate market miscreants and those (such as himself) who had benefited from the lack of serious takeover laws to protect small shareholders.

Brian was vigorous, courageous, provocative, with a consuming drive to get to the truth of matters and also an unswerving advocate for capital markets reform, which went against the prevailing orthodoxy in New Zealand but were standard practice elsewhere.

And he was required reading.

What set Brian apart from the pack was his rigorous and incisive research, deep inside knowledge of New Zealand companies and fierce independence.

"BG" — as he was known to friends — knew where the bodies were buried and he would go out of his way to champion and support any journalist prepared to uncover them.

I first met Brian in Wellington in the early 1980s as I was thinking about transitioning from being a political journalist to financial journalism.

New Zealand was in the midst of serious economic reforms. Financial markets were on the verge of deregulation and the sharemarket was poised to be on a tear as all manner of people bought scrip that would often be proved worthless after the '87 crash.

He was by then the leading analyst at Jarden — "the" investment house of the 1980s — having started in the 1970s at Daysh Renouf where as long-time friend Murray Boyte relates, he had put an advert in The Dominion newspaper for an "out of work Irish economist". The relevant word was "Irish". Daysh Renouf, the good Catholic firm that they were, responded.

Jarden also recruited Rob Cameron and Lloyd Morrison, both now dead, who went on to launch investment banks under their own names — in Morrison's case, revelling in his young ambition to have his own name on a building and a private jet.

Other star performers in Jarden founder president Bryan Johnson's Wellington firmament included Chris Liddell and Bridget Coates.

My own investigation at the New Zealand Times into the Sovereign Gold Mines affair put me on Gaynor's map. He was supportive and encouraging to a fledgling financial journalist. He was well-read — getting weekly deliveries of major newspapers from overseas as we did in those pre-internet days — and supportive at a time when journalists with shares in Equiticorp wanted to puff the stock rather than focus on its debt levels.

He accurately predicted the sharemarket crash. He was incensed at the sale of too many state assets offshore via the privatisation programme that Labour launched in the 1980s, later going on to meticulously reveal in NBR and the Herald just which of the 1980s "oligarchs" benefited from which particular deal.

By the time the sharemarket imploded in October 1987, Brian was an adviser to David Lange and was among a small coterie in the Beehive who stiffened Lange's resolve to pull the plug on Sir Roger Douglas' planned flat tax package which he accurately predicted would have resulted in a huge structural Budget deficit, social spending cuts and more asset sales.

In July 1991 I wrote a seminal series in The Examiner raising questions over financial arrangements made by Fay Richwhite and Capital Markets and the sale of Bank of New Zealand shares to the National Provident Fund ahead of the 1990 bank bailout.

I had earlier taken the story to TVNZ's Assignment programme but the network came under pressure and the story was emasculated.

The upshot was an $8 million defamation suit with NBR named as first defendant and myself as the second defendant.

Publisher Barry Colman was made of tougher stuff.

But others wanted to play "white knight" and reach a settlement for Fay Richwhite to back off and a statement to run saying my articles were erroneous, which would have had the effect of ruining my credibility.

Brian publicly supported the articles in The Examiner and went on to later campaign for an inquiry into the Fay Richwhite-Capital Markets merger, the effective demise of the BNZ — which he believed should have stayed in NZ ownership — and its sale to National Australia Bank.

He challenged the BNZ directors at extraordinary general meetings but the sale went through.

Brian was concerned that too many New Zealand shareholders took a short term focus, selling out at the first sniff of a profit instead of staying in for the long haul. This was a recurring concern he plumbed repeatedly at NBR, along with a focus on weak-kneed regulators who would not stand up to the powerful.

Gaynor, pictured in 2004, as a guest speaker at an investment seminar at the Masterton Club dining room. Photo / NZME

By 1997, Tony O'Reilly's Dublin-based Independent News and Media had launched its takeover of Herald owner Wilson and Horton.

O'Reilly sent his biographer Ivan Fallon down to Auckland to talent scout. We met him at the Regent hotel. Fallon was compelling that INM would invest heavily in business news at the Herald.

Brian was convinced when the Irish said they had managed to attract Rod Oram from the Financial Times to be editor of the new Business Herald, which was launched in April 1997.

Thus began his 20-plus year reign on this page.

He trod on toes. Sir Robert Jones threatened but dropped legal action. Another major legal challenge was from Mark Hotchin in the aftermath of the finance company debacles.

As Brian wrote in December 2019, the years have rolled by quickly and he never had a shortage of topics to write about. "These include our winning and losing companies, as well as our top-performing businesspeople, rogues and con men."

His most admired companies had been Ryman Healthcare, Mainfreight, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Port of Tauranga and a2 Milk, "mainly because they have clear objectives and have established fantastic operational rhythms that have enabled them to achieve their goals."

The Fletcher group of companies, Fonterra, Brierley Investments and GPG had been the most disappointing large-cap companies.

By 2019, Brian was restless. He had withdrawn from his executive role at Milford Asset Management, the company he and others had built into NZ's pre-eminent funds management firm. He had earlier been devastated by a 2014 market manipulation scandal which resulted in the loss of Milford's warrant to invest on behalf of the Super Fund and a $1.5m settlement with the Financial Markets Authority.

He felt it cut into his own integrity and he spent a huge deal of personal capital meeting with many investors in the high-growth funds to assure them their money was safe and that rigorous governance was in place.

Brian had seen Pattrick Smellie was facing a tough time at BusinessDesk selling a financial wire service to mainstream media. He saw the opportunity to build a full- subscription online business "paper" akin to the online version of the Australian Financial Review.

Brian did his homework before investing with a 40 per cent stake in Content Limited, which published BusinessDesk, and went offshore to study what had worked elsewhere.

He was highly enthusiastic and the results were immediately obvious as BusinessDesk went on a major recruitment drive, revamped its website and adopted a more engaging approach.

He was relentless in his ambition and while nominally chair of Content Limited, was an active mentor for young journalists.

The NZX ticker in downtown Auckland pays a tribute to Brian Gaynor after his death. Photo / Supplied

Typically, he would be in at work at 7am, having already digested the major business news and opinion from the world's pre-eminent financial publications.

Brian would have liked BusinessDesk to stay independent. But he respected the wishes of other key shareholders to realise their investments and sell late last year.

As he observed, "they've never had money before". That said, he was happy that it was NZME that acquired BusinessDesk in late November 2021 and he was confident it would honour its commitment to ensure the financial news service retained its ethos.

In the days before his death he told me he was particularly encouraged by the way in which some younger journalists were stepping up.

Irish roots

Brian's passing has left a huge vacuum — not just in the investing community, but also among the tight Irish diaspora and business community.

He was born in September 1948 in Limerick, in the province of Munster, Southern Ireland.

Educated by the Jesuits at Crescent College — where he was head boy and captained a victorious rugby squad — he went on to complete his education at University College Cork (UCC) and then in Dublin.

It was his love for rugby which drew him to New Zealand as he trailed the Irish rugby team's first tour here in 1976. And a connection with the famous Gaelic footballer "Moss" Keane, a former flatmate of his in Dublin, who had come down to play.

At his funeral yesterday, longtime friend Murray Boyte — who organised the Wellington "teddy bears" rugby club — described meeting a dishevelled, bespectacled, bearded Irishman with a newspaper tucked under his arm and "an engaging smile and eyes that lit up".

Brian's charm, humour, generosity and love of his family have been mentioned in many tributes this week.

His brother Dermot, who is out from Ireland, said he was a champion for his adopted home and never lost his love for Ireland and all things Irish.

Brian was vigorous, courageous, provocative, with a consuming drive to get to the truth. Photo / NZME

Brian was married for more than 30 years to Anna, who he met when both of them were working in the Beehive.

He was a family man and loved his sports, particularly golf, which he played with his surviving son Peter and close friend Oliver Lee.

Brian was also a member of the Metropolis "family", serving on the apartment building's body corporate committee since 2017.

It's a mark of the respect in which he was held that members of the staff joined the committee for his funeral yesterday.

He will be hugely missed by many, including me. It is hard to credit that I will never again pick up the phone to just one opening word: "Gaynor".

Friends remember

"The bond with many of us was based on sports, friendship, travel and conversations. BG had curiosity, listening skills, laugher, strong principles in abundance and trust. One of his greatest skills was the ability to sum up that 'cut of a person's jib', so to speak, in a very few seconds. In 1978, BG called and instructed that we must meet in Limerick, to follow the All Blacks. The first stop was his hometown, Limerick, to see Munster play the All Blacks on October 31, 1978. When Munster sensationally beat the All Blacks at Thomond Park, the joy and pride exemplified by the wonderful reactions from Brian and friends is etched in all our memories. The happiest of days it was. As a New Zealander, you did not have to buy a drink in the province of Munster, or in most of Ireland, for days until the test against Ireland in Dublin." - David Service, Royal Wellington Golf Club

"When Tony O'Reilly bought the Herald, Brian went out of his way to introduce James Parkinson, who was Independent News and Media's chief financial officer, to his contacts in the local business community. Parkinson brought out INM's Irish bankers to New Zealand to show them what the company was acquiring through its takeover of Wilson and Horton (then owner of the Herald). But after the assets went into Australia's APN, things soured. Brendan Hopkins (APN's chief executive) did not like Brian's incisive questioning and wanted to exclude him from the analyst calls. This of course did not deter Brian." - Oliver Lee, Oliver Lee Publications

"Brian commenced his New Zealand stockbroking career in the 1970s at Daysh Renouf and quickly settled into the collusive Wellington broking scene and immediately began to challenge the market rules and vested interests operating in an antiquated financial environment. He was a champion for the small investor. The right for them to be treated fairly. Being able to participate in transparent markets that had the appropriate checks and balances to protect and generate returns on their hard-earned investment funds." - Murray Boyte, businessman and friend of 46 years