Broker Had A Way With Words

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday March 4, 2008

Michael Baume and Louise Arthur

RAY ARTHUR

1925-2008

THERE has often been some flamboyance about Australian finance journalists who move from writing about finance to participating in it - with varied results. But unlike Christopher Skase, Trevor Kennedy and Trevor (Pierpont) Sykes, Ray Arthur was a quiet achiever who, as a leading Sydney stockbroker for 30 years, made a significant impact on the stockbroking industry.

His lack of formal education, which he made up for after returning from war service, convinced him of the need for professional skills in a stockbroking industry that, when he entered it, was dominated by members of rich families who had gone to the right schools and had the right connections. When he retired in the early 1990s he had helped convert the Australian market into a well-trained, thoroughly professional and innovative world-class financial centre.

In recognition of the benefits of his innovative approach, particularly in professional training, modern technology and the need to become more involved in developments worldwide, he was elected to the Sydney Stock Exchange's board of directors for six years.

He was a driving force behind the development of the Securities Institute of Australia and its study courses, aimed at lifting the skills level of the industry. The institute made him its second life member after 20 years' service. He was also a founder of the Claude Club, senior members of the investment community who still meet over lunch once a month to discuss a member's paper about the industry. This has played a significant role in lifting its intellectual base.

Raymond Francis Arthur, who has died aged 82, was born in Campsie and the family settled in Coogee. He left high school at 14 to supplement the family income; his father, Leslie, had lost his job in the Depression but family pride meant they did not go on the dole, and his mother, Dorothy, got a job as forewoman at a printery.

Ray Arthur joined the Coogee surf club and played rugby union for Randwick. A promising football career was interrupted in 1943 when, at 18, he joined the air force and became a wireless operator/air gunner with 23 squadron B24 Liberators in the Pacific-New Guinea theatre.

After the war, his love of sport saw him quickly back in Randwick's first-grade side and winning the beach sprint for Coogee at the National Surf Lifesaving championships. He was also a stylish cricketer and competent tennis player.

He set to work and made up for missing three years of high school, and then qualified as an associate of the Australian Society of Accountants and the Chartered Institute of Secretaries.

He had "discovered" literature during the war through being friends with an aircrew member who had been an English teacher, and this led him to move into finance journalism with The Australian Financial Review in the early 1950s.

He wrote about finance in understandable language for almost a decade as the investment editor of the AFR and as the finance editor of the The Sun-Herald. He occasionally contributed to The Sydney Morning Herald (and often under pseudonyms for a variety of journals and magazines) and developed such a reputation for giving his readers sound advice (both positive and negative) that he was invited to became a partner in stockbrokers T.J. Thompson and Co in the early 1960s. After this firm merged with Ord Minnett, he founded his own business, R.F. Arthur & Co, which he ran for 18 years.

As financial markets became more sophisticated, he broadened his approach through partnerships and joint ventures with authorised money-market dealers, foreign brokers and banks, such as the Bank of Singapore and as a member and director for three years of the Sydney Futures Exchange (which merged with the ASX after his retirement).

He had met Margaret Breen when still in uniform, but they waited three years, until 1949, when he was well on the way to becoming an accountant, before they married.

Ray Arthur is survived by Margaret, their daughters Patricia, Narelle, Louise and Robyn, and 10 of his 11 grandchildren.

Michael Baume and Louise Arthur

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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