Profile: Mark Bouris
By Lucinda Schmidt | theage.com.au | 12 March
When Mark Bouris sold his stake in Wizard Home Loans in 2004, he realised he had few ideas about where to go for financial expertise to invest his money for retirement. So he decided to give an equal amount to five advisers and watch their strategy over two years to see who came out on top.
The big name advisers - at Deutsche, Merrill Lynch, Macquarie, UBS Warburg and Goldman Sachs - came up with five totally different plans. Over the two years, none of them outperformed each other or even the sharemarket index. "As the tide rose in global equity markets, so did my returns," says Bouris, 51, noting that the reverse was also true - but the fees kept being deducted.
He has outlined what he learned in his first book, on how to take charge of your own retirement. It ties in with his latest venture, launched last July, establishing a network of independent fee-for-service financial planners and associated advisers to prepare super strategies, tax returns, wills, insurance and the like.
The network, called Yellow Brick Road, has only 20 advisers, all in Sydney, but Bouris has national plans.
Having successfully challenged the domination of the banks to fund the Australian dream of owning a home, he's now attacking the status quo on the second great dream: a comfortable retirement.
For Bouris himself, however, retirement is a long way off. Apart from building his financial planning business, he's in a joint venture with James Packer and Wizard's new owner, GE Money, to expand the brand internationally.
Their first target is India, where Bouris spends several days each month attempting to replicate the home loan revolution he and Aussie Home Loans' John Symond unleashed in Australia a decade ago. So far, Wizard International has 22 branches in four Indian cities.
Bouris also remains chairman of the Australian Financial Investments Group (a GE company) and is an adjunct professor in banking, finance and tax at the University of NSW. Plus he's the main carer for three of his four sons, who live with him in a city apartment in Sydney.
After working flat out six days a week for 30 years, he has spoken of slowing down a bit, "but it hasn't really happened," admits Bouris, who is an exercise and yoga devotee. "But I'm doing stuff I enjoy. It's not pressure work, it's fun work."
He began his career as a chartered accountant, then spent seven years at a small Sydney law firm specialising in structured finance deals throughout the '80s boom time. But the entrepreneurial and driven Bouris was never going to spend his whole career in professional services; by his early 30s he had established his own property development business.
Then came his big leap, setting up Wizard in 1996, to take advantage of Australia's newly deregulated financial system. Access to international capital markets meant start-ups such as Wizard could fund their mortgages without having a big customer deposit base.
"I always understood the funding part of the business better than the branding," says Bouris, who had completed a masters in commerce in the late 1970s on capital markets and buying and selling securitised mortgages. "It was a misconception that I ran the marketing."
In 1999, James Packer invested $25 million in Wizard and in 2001 ABN Amro sold its Australian Mortgage Securities business to Wizard, meaning Wizard owned its funding source.
Bouris says the decision to sell to GE Money, a subsidiary of General Electric, in 2004, for more than $400 million, was not hard because Wizard could not compete with the banks' multibillion-dollar balance sheets forever.
"I felt I was doing the right thing by the business," he says. "It got too big for me; it got beyond me, to be frank.
"I did know sooner or later the price of money would increase. Good times don't roll on forever."
The Yellow Brick Road To Your Financial Security,by Mark Bouris, Allen & Unwin, $26.95.
The big questions
Biggest break Getting Deutsche Bank Private Equity to fund the acquisition of the wholesale business of ABN AMRO Bank in 2001.
Biggest achievement Establishing a branch-based mortgage business when banks were closing down and convincing the sceptics that we had the right strategy and to stick with us.
Biggest regret Losing lots of great people within the Wizard organisation in the past two years.
Best investment In 2004, being issued with shares in General Electric in return for my investment in Wizard.
Worst investment Probably that best investment, because the shares I was issued in GE have suffered along with every other Dow Jones stock over the last 12 months.
Attitude to money It's there for a purpose and you can't take it with you. It's not all it's cracked up to be and it brings with it its own set of problems.
Personal philosophy Try to smile every day. Hang out with loved ones, including friends. Don't get caught up in bullshit. Wake up tomorrow morning happy and healthy.
First published by TheAge.com.au on March 12 2008
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