Eureka acquired by InvestSMART Group

Eureka was acquired by InvestSMART this year. What does it mean for the site and how has it changed?

InvestSMART is listed on the ASX and provides online financial services, products and portfolio management tools for investors. In 2014, it acquired Intelligent Investor, which provides stock recommendations and research. Eureka was acquired this year from News Corp and covers wealth management: where investors should be looking to put their money, on superannuation, economic trends, and other financial content, so it was a very neat fit for InvestSMART. Our overall team is now much larger and our investment coverage has expanded. Since the acquisition we are much more focused on providing information to our subscribers and investors generally that is really going to help them build and manage their wealth. We have expanded the team to incorporate more specialists, particularly in the areas of financial advice, superannuation and on different asset classes.
 
There’s never been more information out there for investors. How does Eureka differentiate itself in the market?
Eureka and Intelligent Investor provide a wide range of investment research and recommendations, and InvestSMART has a range of different managed fund products as well as sophisticated online and mobile portfolio management tools. We've just launched an InvestSMART app which allows users to get immediate stock recommendations and research, and they can also manage their portfolio holdings. This helps us to differentiate ourselves from others, who can provide some content but not all the products and tools that enable investors to actually go out there and do things in a financial sense.
 
You were Editor of Eureka and then stepped away from the site for about two years, and now you’re back. Did that time away give you a new perspective on the type of content that you and the team want to be working on?
It did. During that time I was able to work with some other organisations in the financial services space, and that gave me a fresh perspective and a few new ideas which we will be implementing over time at Eureka to enhance our services offering.
 
How did you get your start in business, finance and banking journalism?
We’re going back into ancient history! I started in 1983 on The Sun newspaper in Melbourne as a Finance Reporter. But, it was a happy coincidence that I landed in finance. I was ready to start my career and the role at The Sun was available. I was on a steep learning curve, but the more I was involved with it the more I enjoyed it and found it interesting, and over time decided this is the area I wanted to focus my time on. I was there for about four years and went to the The Australian Financial Review and had an extensive period at the AFR in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth before moving to The Age. I left journalism in the late 1990s to join Standard & Poor’s, where I managed their content and media, and made my way back into journalism after a stint running my own PR business. 
 
How have you seen financial journalism change over your career?
Having started in newspapers, and many journalists can say the same thing, in the 1980s and 90s you were working with a daily deadline and you had pretty much the whole day to get your stories together. Now it’s continuous and the demand for information is pretty much immediate.

Even on Eureka Report we have now moved to a continuous publishing model. So rather than just publishing just a few times a week as it did before, we are now publishing every day and we’re putting content up on the website all the time.

Also, we’re very focused on video content at Eureka and have two studios now - in Sydney and Melbourne - where we are producing content several times a week.
 
You have access to some of the best and brightest financial minds in Australia. For those of us who don’t, what’s your advice?
From an investor perspective it’s really important to do lots of research before making any decisions. In addition to digesting different articles across different platforms, it’s important to do your research and understand what’s going on before making any investment decisions. And things change, so you need to keep on top of your investments at all times.

What are you and the team open to, or not, when it comes to working with PRs?
We’re fairly open to working with PRs, and we do regularly. We’re open to receiving information, but we are not looking to write up direct promotions of financial products. What we tend to do is look at what else is out there, and general trends. So, we’re more likely to talk to multiple players in the industry rather than just one.
 
Most memorable story you’ve been involved with in your career?
The collapse of the Bond Corporation.

Coffee, lunch or drinks?
Coffee.

If you could have a super power, what would it be?
To be able to predict the future.