Success and More Interesting Stuff

The geopolitical and economic tides have shifted. Recent decades played out against a backdrop of globalisation, disinflation, falling interest rates, and above-normal equity market returns. That era is behind us, and the path forward looks vastly different. This shift sits at the core of this special episode, which brings together three leaders in equity investing, gold mining, and economics. The...

Morry Waked revolutionised the funds management industry in Australia. Armed with a natural gift for mathematics and the rigorous training of an actuary, he made the leap from insurance to the equities market and helped turn quantitative investing into a legitimate, powerhouse strategy. By using sophisticated algorithms to strip away emotion and generate above-average returns, Morry has spent over...

Manny Pohl may well be the 'father of growth investing' in Australia, but his journey began thousands of miles away as an electrical engineer in South Africa. From a chance meeting on the Gold Coast to co-founding the $17-billion-dollar powerhouse Hyperion Asset Management, Manny has spent decades proving that 'quality growth' is the ultimate winning strategy. But in a new era of rising interest r...

In this episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, we sit down with Dr Don Hamson, founder of Plato Investment Management. Hamson built a $25 billion fund manager, but it started with a problem. His original long/short strategy was disrupted during the GFC when regulators banned short selling. What followed was a shift towards income, built around a simple idea. In Australia, franking credits...

Jillian Broadbent has worked at the heart of Australia’s financial and policy institutions for decades. She began at the Reserve Bank under Nugget Coombs, helped build Bankers Trust during deregulation, and later served three terms on the RBA board through the Asian and global financial crises. She also chaired the Clean Energy Finance Corporation from inception and served as Chancellor of the Uni...

Guzman y Gomez Founder & co-CEO Steven Marks joins Matthew Kidman to discuss his decision to leave Wall Street, the tough early years building GYG, why quality is non-negotiable, and what comes next as the business expands into the US.

To mark the 50th episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, Matthew Kidman is joined by Chris Judd, Jun Bei Liu and Dr Shane Oliver for a panel discussion focused on four timely issues facing markets as we approach 2026.

Mark Landau’s best investment decision wasn’t a stock pick — it was meeting his future business partner, Rafi Lamm. Together they built L1 Capital from scratch into a $17 billion fund manager. In this episode, Landau reflects on the lessons from success, setbacks, and starting again as a listed company.

From small-town Bega to the boardrooms of London and Hong Kong, Alexis George built a global career before taking on one of the toughest jobs in Australian business — rebuilding AMP. In this episode, she shares her story, the lessons she learned abroad, and how she’s reshaping AMP’s culture and strategy for the future.

Viktor Shvets on the end of cycles, the rise of the cloud of finance, and why politics may now be the greatest market risk. At Livewire Live 2025, Viktor Shvets delivered one of the most anticipated keynotes of the event. Over four decades, he has built a reputation as one of the sharpest minds in global finance, unafraid to challenge consensus. In this episode, Viktor explains why the old rules o...

Four decades into his career, Paul Moore seems to be just getting started. Two years ago, he made the bold decision to vend his business, PM Capital, into Phil King’s Regal Partners. Many thought this was an exit plan for Moore. Instead, it proved to be the tonic he needed. PM Capital has since become a growth engine inside Regal, with close to $5 billion under management and performance that cont...

The professional investment game is relentless. No matter where you are in the world, you cannot escape the endless procession of markets. Sure, you can go on holiday and attempt the concept of relaxation, but each morning when you wake up, Wall Street has just closed. It’s impossible not to sneak a peek. Each month your numbers are measured against the market and your peers. There is no hiding. A...

Nick Griffin’s path to fund management may have seemed preordained, his father worked in the industry, but his journey has been anything but ordinary. After completing a commerce degree, Griffin missed out on a graduate role with one of the big four accounting firms. That setback led him to the Commonwealth Bank’s investment team, where he cut his teeth before embarking on a backpacking trip that...

Jake Klein left a high-flying banking career to chase a hunch about gold, and it paid off in spades. From pioneering mining ventures in China to building Evolution Mining into a $16 billion powerhouse, Klein has made a habit of spotting value where others see risk. In this episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, he shares how growing up in South Africa shaped his thinking, why Western democ...

We're often told that beating the market over the long term is impossible. A lucky year or two? Maybe. But doing it for more than two decades? That’s supposed to be out of reach. Paul Taylor has defied that logic. Managing a concentrated portfolio of 30 to 50 local stocks through everything from the GFC to the COVID crash. It sounds exhausting - but he shows no signs of slowing down. In today’s tu...

Go back 20 years and consensus said that managing international equity portfolios from Australia was just too difficult.  Bob Desmond  and his team at Claremont Global are proving that is yesterday’s thinking. Starting from scratch in 2012 the business has grown to over $1 billion and the style of picking the eyes out of quality growth has been able to outpace global markets. Desmond grew up in Rh...

Australia is obsessed with interest rates like no other country, and it is distracting us from tackling more pressing challenges, like productivity, that would have a greater impact on the cost of living crisis facing many Australians. That's the view of former Reserve Bank Governor Dr. Philip Lowe, who spent 43 years working at the RBA, including 7 years in the top job from 2016 to 2023. Dr Lowe...

Chris Corrigan has had his fingerprints all over corporate Australia for more than 50 years now. The boy from Bowral joined stockbroking firm Ord Minnett in the late 1960s to get the ball rolling. When Ords formed a joint venture with US fund manager Bankers Trust in the early '70s, Corrigan jumped in boots and all. He saw an opportunity to derail the establishment life insurance companies that do...

Success and More Interesting Stuff is back in 2025 with new episodes being released on the first Tuesday of each month. We're excited for the year ahead and would love for you to subscribe to the podcast.

Welcome to the final episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff for 2024. In this episode, we’re closing out the year with a guest who knows how to deliver a knockout punch. Joe Aston spent 12 years as co-writer of the AFR’s Rear Window column, transforming it from a finance industry gossip page into a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred must-read. With a sharp wit and a fearless approach, Aston took...

Bega Cheese turned 125 this year. It started as the Bega Co-operative Creamery Company in 1999, and for over a century, things were pretty quiet. That all changed in 2000 when a young dairy farmer, Barry Irvin, took the reins as chairman. From then on, it’s been a whirlwind of growth and transformation. In 2011, Irvin took Bega to the Australian stock market, and under his leadership, the company...

David Lyons has travelled around the world chasing a rugby ball. From the time he started to take the game seriously as a 15-year-old he was earmarked for success. Twice he toured Europe with the Australian schoolboys, opening his eyes to a world significantly larger than the one he experienced growing up in the NSW country town of Molong. Lyons played 46 tests for the Wallabies over 8 years inclu...

Sometimes, misfortune can lead to opportunity.  Wes Maas was an aspiring young rugby league player trying to establish himself in the NRL. The kid from Dubbo had boundless energy and in his spare time, he worked in an equipment hire business. A football injury not only meant he was out of action on the field, but it also took him out of the hire yard and into head office. It was here that his worl...

It is rare for a person to spend the first half of their working life in the public service and then pivot to build a multi-billion dollar financial business. Making the story even more remarkable is that this person grew up in regional Queensland - where financial products are hardly the main course of the local economy.  Ian Macoun, the Managing Director and Founder of Pinnacle Investment Manage...

Traditionally, on the show, we talk to people involved in some shape or form with the share market. Today, we are excitedly going off-piste and delving into the unlisted world in one of Australia's outstanding success stories.  In 2008, Lina Calabria and two partners decided to start nine separate businesses as consultants. They had plenty of bright ideas and thought that creating a portfolio of c...