Mr Brett Clegg

Regional Director NSW, News Corp Australia
BBus (UTS), MComm(Hons)(UNSW)

Mr Brett Clegg addressed graduates from the UTS Business School in the Great Hall, University of Technology, Sydney on Monday 30 September 2013, 2:00pm.

Our speaker today is Mr Brett Clegg.

Brett is News Corp Australia’s executive general manager for New South Wales. He oversees a portfolio of major publications including The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and the NewsLocal group of suburban newspapers which includes The Wentworth Courier, The Manly Daily, Inner West Courier and North Shore Times.

Previously Brett has held roles including deputy editor and deputy CEO of The Australian, as well as senior executive and editorial roles at Fairfax Media, most recently as CEO and publisher of the Financial Review Group. He has also worked as a senior executive at Macquarie Group in their equity capital markets business and in the auditing practice of Ernst & Young.

He originally began as a cadet journalist at The Australian Financial Review in the late 1990s. At 23 years of age, Brett was made the youngest editor of the financial markets column Street Talk, which he grew at the time into a ‘must read’ among sharemarket investors.

Brett was fortunate to have experienced a range of major capital transactions including the initial public offerings of toll road operator ConnectEast and gaming concern Tattersalls (now Tatts Group). He was involved in significant equity raisings for companies including Ramsay Health Care, Goodman Fielder, Macquarie Infrastructure Group, Centennial Coal, Macquarie Airports and Transurban.

Brett is passionate about indigenous education and the arts. He is an ambassador of the Australian Indigenous Education Fund and sits on the President's Council of the Art Gallery of NSW. He has a Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology, Sydney and a Masters of Commerce in Advanced Finance from the University of New South Wales.

It gives me great pleasure to invite Mr Brett Clegg to deliver the occasional address.

Speech

Thank you.

I am absolutely delighted and honoured to be here with you today for this occasional address.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the presiding Chancellor, Presiding Vice Chancellor, the faculty dean and registrar, distinguished guests, and of course all the graduates, and their friends and family here today.

For the graduates amongst us, please have no doubt that sitting here at this ceremony is an enormous personal achievement and something you should be rightly proud of. You can claim to have ascended one of your earliest career mountains and this experience will equip you well for future success and professional rewards.

I clearly remember sitting in your place - in this very hall - when graduating sixteen years ago. If I was to be honest I probably didn’t realise the scope of the achievement at the time, but I do recall a sense of anticipation as I looked to take all that I had learned from this institution and apply it in my career - something I still do to this very day.

Indeed, my fondness for this institution has a personal dimension given my wife - Annabel Hepworth, a fine journalist and the national business correspondent at The Australian newspaper - is also a graduate of UTS. So given I was both trained here and it was the place where I discovered the love of my life, it was impossible to say 'no' when I was invited to speak with you on this important occasion.

In preparing for today I also reflected on what I would have liked to have known back in early 1998 and decided on highlighting a few of the lessons I have so far collected on my career and life journey. I hope these can be of some use to you in the coming months and years.

Here are a few of these gleaned through experience, including the occasional trial and error . . .

* The corporate world is built on both reputation and relationships - if you lose your integrity it will not matter how talented or bright a spark you are. It's a long road back from making a short-sighted decision that tarnishes your image among your colleagues and industry peers.

There are always instances in working life where you must make decisions where the answer is not necessarily clear and areas of behaviour can be grey. Never lose sight of the long game amid opportunities for short-term advantage. When I was a business journalist, I covered many a story where good people had made frankly dumb, often rash decisions.

Please don’t let yourself down and be one of them.

* Secondly, embrace challenge and change - technology has unleashed waves of creative destruction unlike anything seen since the industrial revolution. This is the arena into which you have stepped or are about to be stepping.

When I started as a cadet at The Australian Financial Review in the late 1990s, it was the tail end of a golden age. Lunches were long and liquid, deadlines were late, and we enjoyed record newspaper advertising revenues. In my first week I was sat next to the legendary Trevor Sykes, otherwise known by his nom de plume Pierpont, who would become both a mentor and friend. This was a man whose seminal tome Bold Riders on the excesses of the 1980s had been essential reading in my University days.

Today I still love the industry but as we wrestle with a painful digital transition, some days feel like I am experiencing the first 20 minutes of the war film Saving Private Ryan on a feedback loop. It sure is tough and requires a fortitude I probably didn't know I had back in 1998.

* On that note, accept adversity as an inevitable part of life - careers are rarely linear progressions. I sincerely hope you will meet with early success and be recognised for your potential. But at some juncture not everything will go to plan. From these moments and experiences you must learn and grow. It may not feel so great at the time but it will strengthen your character - and hopefully resolve.

I am fortunate to have had a varied and rewarding career but there have been more than a few detours. Occasionally ones – such as jumping from auditing to financial journalism or later to investment banking – felt risky but were based on opportunity. Others, both good and bad, have come unexpectedly and were not of my own choosing.

Trust me when I say that resilience is a critical faculty in modern-day business.

* Finally, challenge convention but try and be respectful in doing so. For Australia to reach its great potential we need more business leaders and professional willing to test the boundaries and create value through new ideas and perspectives.

I admit that when I had the opportunity to write The AFR markets column Street Talk at the age of 24, which I did for several magical years, I was perhaps a bit of a ‘young punk’. But I’m here to give you the benefit of what little wisdom I have rather than a “do as I say but not as I do” lecture.

So if I were to rethink the earliest part of my career and what I would do differently, it was perhaps to be not so certain I knew all the answers but to realise that the process of learning doesn’t stop when you graduate from University.

Rather it never stops. Recognising and then embracing this essential fact of life will make your career both more enjoyable and deliver you more options.

Thank you for listening and I sincerely wish you all the best.