Vale Greg Bright, father of Australia’s financial trade press

Veteran journalist, publisher and entrepreneur Greg Bright has died aged 70.

Bright was a founder of Conexus Financial, publisher of Investment Magazine, Professional Planner and Top1000funds.com. He also created and managed a range of other titles in a career spanning more than four decades.

Bright set the standard for how the specialist media in Australia covers financial services. Starting his career as an economics writer for the Sydney Morning Herald and then as an assistant editor at the national business daily The Australian Financial Review, Bright founded Trade News Corporation in 1983.

It marked the start of an extraordinary period of creativity that saw more than a dozen publications launched, all built on the belief that the financial services industry had important stories that needed to be told, and that it deserved high-quality journalism to tell them.

Even as an old-school journo, Bright had one characteristic that few of his peers truly possessed: a strong streak of entrepreneurialism, and an ability to happily inhabit the worlds of both commerce and editorial.

His editorial instincts told him where the stories were, how industries were likely to develop, and how they should be covered. His commercial savvy created publications and business structures which allowed journalism and journalists to flourish.

Bright was prepared to back talent. He could spot it a mile away and nurture it to its full potential. He was a boss, friend and mentor to countless reporters, not only on the titles he launched, managed or edited, but on others as well.

He was demanding, in his own way, could be frank in his feedback and was often hilarious giving it. As a tragic lifelong Parramatta Eels supporter he’d often quote Jack Gibson to make a point.

He made more than one reporter better at what they do by making them more like him.

As the internet emerged as a disruptive force and the media became more volatile and reactive, the traits of accuracy, fairness, honesty, and genuine intellectual curiosity began to lose their currency. Because Bright embodied those traits and encouraged them in others, he was increasingly an anachronism to be cherished.

There is scarcely a corner of the modern financial services industry in this country that Bright did not explore through the publications he founded, which included Blue Book, Ethical Investor, I&T News, IFA, Investment Magazine, Investor Daily, Investor Strategy News, Investor Supermarket, Investor Weekly, IO&C News, Master Funds Quarterly, New Investor, Professional Planner, SMSF Magazine and Super Review. And through Top1000funds.com, his vision went global.

Bright’s influence was broader than just in the world of journalism. He was committed to shining a light on the less glamourous but no less important sectors of the financial services industry, such as custody and administration, and the publications he founded and led changed the industries they covered, always for the better.

Bright’s interests transcended financial services. Trade News published Encore magazine, a publication devoted to the film industry. And he had interests outside of publishing: Bright was a non-executive director of La Trobe Financial, and an executive director of Shed Connect.

For the past year Bright based himself at Culburra on the NSW south coast as a freelance writer, from where he continued to launch well-reasoned missives via social media – in particular, in staunch defence of the compulsory superannuation system.

He was deeply respected and will be missed by all who knew him for his energy and passion, his humour and humanity, his wit and intelligence, and for invariably being great company.

Bright is survived by his wife Christine, and by his children Sophie, Phoebe and Eddie; by his stepson Christian and daughter-in-law Tia; and by his grandchildren Tayla and Toby.