Andrew Main

Andrew Main has been the wealth editor of the Australian since 2012, having been the business editor since June 2007. He is a highly experienced public speaker, MC and corporate communicator who is renowned for making business comprehensible and interesting.

He frequently MCs events on investment and retirement, is involved with video work both in-house and with Sky Business, and has had a fair bit of success in convincing people to be more engaged in saving for retirement, the traps and pitfalls and so on.

Andrew has an in-depth knowledge of corporate governance issues, the ASX and equity markets, insurance and reinsurance industries and the mining, resources and energy sectors.

He also uses his extensive experience and knowledge to speak publicly and moderate discussions between business leaders at conferences throughout the country and overseas.

Andrew Main became a financial reporter in 1979 then had a brief but exciting interlude between 1987 and 1992 as an institutional stockbroker in Sydney, Paris and London with the organisation now known as JP Morgan Australia.

He did his cadetship at The West Australian then moved to the Sydney Morning Herald in 1984, followed by about 14 years with the Australian Financial Review as a senior reporter between 1993 and 2007. While at the AFR Andrew Main reported on the HIH Royal Commission and in 2003 Harper Collins published his book Other People’s Money – The complete story of the extraordinary collapse of HIH.

Later in 2003 he was involved in the AFR’s revelation of the Offset Alpine -Swiss Bank account affair which resulted in his being in the AFR team that was awarded the 2004 Gold Walkley Award, the top award in Australian journalism.

Andrew Main then wrote a biography of Rene Rivkin, Rivkin Unauthorised – The meteoric rise and tragic fall of an unorthodox money man, which was published in 2005, shortly after Rivkin’s death.

Both books sold well and in 2005 were both shortlisted for the top award in business book publishing in Australia, the Blake Dawson Waldron Prize for Business Literature.

Andrew Main has a regular radio spot with Deborah Cameron on ABC 702 in Sydney in which he tries to unravel the mysteries of business.

Andrew received the ultimate accolade after a speech on HIH to a group of insurance lawyers on the Gold Coast in 2004. One of the lawyers, when filling in the feedback form after the speech, said “the comedian wasn’t that funny.”

There’s a huge interest in superannuation nowadays and the burgeoning size of the superannuation cash pile in Australia (last seen at $1.84 Trillion, according to APRA) has turned superannuation into a significant force in Australia in its own right. Andrew Main is the right person to make the topic accessible and interesting.