It’s an enviable record no other listed company can match. For more than 120 years, through major conflicts and economic upheaval, this diversified investment house has always kept shareholders top of mind, not missing a beat on the dividend front since listing in 1903.
APRA-regulated funds, especially profit-for-member funds, have had a good innings during the accumulation phase. It’s proving a different story in the decumulation phase with a growing number of members demanding a far more nuanced service.
Vale Henri Aram: A financial adviser who left an enduring legacy
There is many a retiree in Australia who is sleeping more soundly thanks to Henri Aram, a financial adviser who was advocating fee-based advice when remuneration via commission was the industry norm.
Aram, who passed away at the ripe old age of 101 late last week, has left an indelible mark on an industry whether as a resected adviser via his Sydney-based A.R.A.M. Investment Services or as an author (Money Matters was published in the early 1980s), newspaper columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian or radio commentator.
He had forthright views on advice – and wasn’t afraid to express them. Who could forget his very public spat with Michael Chaney in his then role as chairman of the National Australia Bank in 2009 over the board’s decision to give institutions the lion’s share of a $2 billion capital raising.
Loyal retail investors were left with a few crumbs, made all the staler by the fact that the institutions were sitting on about a 30 per cent profit after just six weeks.
Chaney’s defence was that market volatility made an institutional placement a less risky option than a rights issue to all shareholders. Aram’s rejoinder went to the nub of the matter – all shareholders deserve equal treatment, pointedly noting that ANZ and Macquarie Group had successfully gone down the retail path.
In the same year he had Gary Banks, then chairman of the Productivity Commission, in his sights over that organisation’s proposed “two-strike” rule where a public company would be required to spill its board and seek re-election if 25 per cent of shareholders voted against its remuneration report in two successive years. For Aram, it was an exercise that was “long on good intentions but short on expert advice”.
“This costly, time-wasting and futile exercise, once completed, will have achieved nothing but the wealth destruction of all those whose fortunes had been tied up in the ongoing success of the enterprise to which they had contributed and helped to build. Let’s also not forget all the workers and staff that will be unemployed as a result – all of whom are unlikely to thank those responsible for their plight.”
It was a classic Aram comment, frank, insightful and practical, who came to the industry via a very circuitous route, having had stints in aviation, retail, the rag trade and stockbroking before making his name in the personal advice space. And before this, with his Jewish family, he fled Germany in 1938 – the year Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) confirmed Nazi Germany’s murderous intent towards German Jewry – and then had to live with the indignity of being classified “enemy aliens” by the Australian Government.
Like so many of his faith who escaped Germany pre-war or came after the Holocaust, it has been a story of turning cruel adversity into personal triumph, all of which is detailed in his 2012 autobiography, Undies to Equities, with the ‘undies’ referring to his rag trade stint manufacturing children’s underwear.
As Amazon says in its snapshot of this autobiography, “he arrived in Australia a teenager with nothing. Through hard work, enterprise and some luck, he worked his way up from being an enemy alien to running a successful underwear business, moved into stockbroking and then became Australia’s first personal finance guru and media star.
“With popular radio segments, newspaper columns and books for over 20 years, Aram used his media celebrity to pioneer the fight for ordinary people against corporate and government excess. In his later years he has continued to campaign vigorously on behalf of mum and dad investors against the greed of Australian company boardrooms.”
It’s a remarkable legacy that was duly recognised in 1999 with an OAM for service to the community and to improving public awareness on understanding of finance and investment principles. Vale Henri Aram.
