Postcard from Australia

Tell us about Australia

Official language: English, with an Australian accent and vocabulary.

Currency: Australian dollars, divided into 100 cents. The A$ is the fifth most traded currency in the world.

Population: 24 million, with an urbanisation rate of 90%.

Capital: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Canberra is a purpose built, inland political and administrative capital, and is the largest city not on the Australian coast.

Weather: Everything! Given that Australia spans latitudes ranging from 10° to 45° south, we have the full climactic spectrum from tropical in the Top End to cool temperate in Tasmania. This wide climactic range gives us the full breadth of natural habitats, from tropical rain forest to ancient mountain ranges to spectacular deserts and wide grassy plains.

Your favourite local cuisine: Balmain bugs. This is not a "bush tucker challenge," meaning any form of flora or fauna native to Australia, but rather a species of slipper lobster. Australia is rightly renowned for its seafood, but also produces some of the world's best beef.

Favourite local beverage: Australia is famous for its excellent beer and wine. My favourites are Australian red wines, with the big shiraz (syrah) and cabernet sauvignons of the Barossa Valley in South Australia topping the list. As for beer, I enjoy Victoria Bitter, which, in typical Australian lexicon, is actually not a bitter but a lager.

Best tourist sites: Australia is an ancient continent, with a timeless physical beauty. The coastline, beaches, outback, and exotic wildlife all make Australia a dramatic place to visit. The unique aspect to me is time; Australia's remote places give any visitor the special opportunity to lose yourself in time and space away from seven billion other people.

The Kimberley region of north Western Australia and Kakadu National Park in the Top End of the Northern Territory are stunning landscapes with a great diversity of wildlife. It is best to visit in July and August (our winter) when it is drier and cooler (mid 30 degrees Celsius). In the heart of the continent in the Red Centre lies Uluru, a 350m tall monolith rising out of the desert. With its sister rock formation, Kata Tjutu, they offer spectacular visions of changing light throughout the day.

The Great Barrier Reef, running over 2,000 kilometres along the coast of Queensland, is one of the seven wonders of the natural world. No visit to Australia is complete without a dive on its coral reefs amongst the thousands of species of tropical fish, sharks, turtles, and, my favourite, giant clams. Just do not put your arm in one!

If you like big cities, Sydney and Melbourne have it all; Sydney with its unique deep water harbour, topped off by the iconic Harbour Bridge and unique sail-inspired Sydney Opera House is thought by many citizens of Sydney to beat Melbourne's natural and man-made beauty for the title of most beautiful city on the continent. I will leave it to my colleagues who live in or were born in both cities to settle this ancient rivalry. Personally, and diplomatically, I favour them both!

What I love about Australia: Australia has a spectacular and special history. Indigenous Australians have lived here for some 50,000 years. European settlement commenced only 218 years ago. I love that Australia's best period lies ahead since the country remains dynamic, outward looking and prepared to change.

Country Profile

How many years has Citi been in your country?

Citi first applied to open a branch in Australia 100 years ago, with a representative office opening in 1926. A full banking licence was granted to Citi when Australia liberated its banking system in 1985 and permitted foreign banks to enter the market.

What business units operate in your country?

Australia is a "complex" country in the Citi definition. That means we have both a Global Consumer Business (credit cards, personal loans, retail banking and mortgages) and an Institutional Clients Group (Markets, Corporate and Investment Bank, and Treasury and Trade Solutions) all active in Australia. We serve the leading domestic and international institutional, corporate, financial institutions and government clients.

What are the opportunities and challenges of doing business in your country?

Australia is an open economy marked by the free movement of goods, services and capital. That makes the financial services market highly competitive, with thriving domestic and international players all operating here. We position ourselves as the bank with the best and most extensive global network, and as a thought leader on international capital flows.

Australia has historically relied on an influx of foreign capital to fund its growth. This has allowed it to build its agriculture, mining, financial services and manufacturing industries. This dynamic is expected to continue, which makes us at Citi involved each day in matching investors and institutions with entities in need of capital.

Personal/Professional Background

Where were you born?

I was born and brought up in the northern suburbs of Sydney, but my education and career have taken me around the world many times. I studied at university first in Sydney and then in the UK. My career has allowed me to work in North America, UK, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

What did you study that helped you prepare for your career at Citi, and were there any subjects you realized subsequently would have helped you?

My first university degree was in Economics and my second in Law. I think the combination is an excellent one for preparing you for both the "why" and the "how" of banking. While I think Economics may be better taught at the university level, the most valuable aspect of my economics training was to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts of capital, returns and productivity, which all come together in the idea that countless individual economic decisions by individuals form an economy in aggregate. Law gave me the discipline to look at an issue from multiple perspectives while being prepared persuasively to argue from a particular point of view. That training has proved invaluable throughout my career as a mergers and acquisitions banker.

The missing piece in my formal study was psychology. Everything we do has a human behavioural element, so some study in this area would undoubtedly have been helpful. It has been my task to compensate for the academic deficiency by learning a great deal of psychology on the job.

What other roles and/or countries have you worked in at Citi?

I am relatively new to the company, having joined Citi six months ago to take the role of Citi Country Officer (CCO) in Australia. For thirty years, I have worked for other global banks in the U.S., UK, Asia and Australia.

Most of my career has been as a mergers & acquisitions banker, advising companies and governments on buying and selling businesses. I have also had various senior management roles where I was responsible for Investment Banking divisions or, like now, for a country or region across many business lines within a bank.

What would be your advice to someone just starting their career?

Take risk with your career. If an opportunity comes, take it. Even if what you have grasped does not work exactly as you expect it, you will always learn something from the experience. The most important dimension in the early stage of any career is to learn as quickly as possible. You need to stay curious and voracious in acquiring new knowledge and skills. That may require you to take specific actions, such as going to your mangers to seek their ideas or challenging them to create opportunities for you.

Role and Responsibilities

How do you balance delivering for local stakeholders (given their unique needs) and continuing to work toward enterprise-wide business and bank objectives?

The joy of being a CCO is that you operate right at the intersection of local and global. Rather than seeing these two dimensions as permanently in conflict, the trick to success is to identify how each dimension can contribute to achieve the requirements of the other. For example, Australia is a very digitally advanced market, with world leading adoption rates of new technology. That means that we are a great market for Citi to introduce its digital tools, such as voice biometrics for customer identification. Australia may not be the largest market in Citi's world by population, but, since we have been able to demonstrate a clear-cut customer need and the ability to launch new projects successfully, we have often been able to be in the first wave of new technologies within Citi. And I sincerely hope that pattern continues.

How do you help to enable progress?

Progress comes from encouragement. As a business leader in a global organisation, it is your role to help ensure that your teams have the resources they need to get their jobs done. Once you have helped secure that foundation, I find that the greatest benefit you can bring is to let your people get on with it while you help them stay focused on the ultimate goal.

How do you maintain work-life balance? What do you do in your free time?

Work is part of life, not a competitor to it. Satisfaction comes from performing well both at work and away from it. I try to achieve balance by not allowing the stress of either to cross over into the other aspect of my life. If I succeed in work, that allows me the time for family, sport and my hobby, classic cars.