Association CEO Index 2024 - Flipbook - Page 44
Association CEO Index 2024
44
Business feature
John Winter
CEO, Australian Restructuring
Insolvency and Turnaround
Association (ARITA)
Stay the course, wherever it leads
Tuesday, October 20, 1987.
John Winter, a kid from Sydney’s Northern Beaches, is
nearing the end of his first year at the University of
NSW.
With just two years left of his Commerce degree,
majoring in Economics and Finance, John is on target to
achieve his high school dream of becoming a
stockbroker.
He has always been fascinated by markets. But on this
infamous day, the markets will prove to be at their most
fascinating, as the economic atomic bomb that is the
US stock market crash sends crippling ripple effects
across the planet from its epicentre in New York.
By the time the shockwaves hit our shores, Black
Tuesday – as it becomes known – will go down in
history as the day Australia’s share market lost 25% of
its value. By the end of the month, just 11 days later, it
will have dropped an eye-watering 41%. Our national
economy will take the better part of seven years to
properly recover.
“I was at uni with a bunch of mates,” recalls John of that
fateful day. “Somebody said, ‘We've heard the stock
market's crashing.’ We then had to walk a kilometre to
my car to turn on the radio, because there was no other
way to get the news at that point in time.
“And we went, ‘Oh, my God, the stock market is
crashing.’ So we drove into the city and we watched the
stock market crash. But we also watched our careers
evaporate, because there was not going to be a
stockbroker’s job for love nor money for the next fiveplus years. And there wasn't. So, it was a case of, come
out (of uni) and survive … in the recession we had to
have.”
Today, as the CEO of the Australian Restructuring
Insolvency and Turnaround Association (ARITA), you
could argue there is no better life-shaping memory for
someone in his role.
It was a pivotal period that strengthened John’s powers
of empathy and resilience, core values that have served
him well in the decades since.
Sticking with his degree and training as an economist,
John worked for an international executive search firm
out of uni and then became Head of Economic Research
at recruitment heavyweight Morgan & Banks, where he
pioneered the company’s quarterly Job Index. This was
one of the first tools of its kind to leverage authentic
survey data to measure employment expectations and
identify workforce trends. Such was its reputation, each
Index release was eagerly anticipated – and consumed –
by media, industry associations, job seekers and
recruiters. It helped John generate a remarkable $60
million in publicity during a three-year period and firmly
established the power of data to drive decision-making,
insights and industry reporting.
“I had the incredibly good fortune of sitting next to
(founders) Geoff Morgan and Andrew Banks for the
nearly five years I was there, which was like doing an
MBA every day,” John says. “When I started there,
Morgan & Banks had about 150 staff. When I left, it had
1500. It was a stellar period of time.”
Stints followed in consulting, corporate communications
for the NSW Rural Fire Service, media and crisis
management, as well as senior marketing roles in
organisations such as QBE and Hudson, before
association leadership beckoned.
In 2011 John joined global body ACCA (the Association
of Chartered Certified Accountants) as Head of
Australia and New Zealand.
“I have what is kindly called a portfolio career, which
means I’ve done lots of stuff,” he says.
“When you do come from a diversified background, it
really nicely sets you up to run associations because
they are such diverse organisations. It’s very different to
running a corporation.
