Christopher Joye

Christopher Joye is an Australian fund manager, writer, financial economist, and former government advisor.^[1][2] He was appointed to the board of the Liberal Party think-tank, the Menzies Research Centre (2003–2007), by former Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull (who also hired Joye into investment banking at Goldman Sachs out of university) after Joye authored an influential report for the 2003 Prime Minister's Home Ownership Task Force.^[3][4] Turnbull has been quoted in the media saying: "He's got a very, very fierce intellect ... I've never seen anyone as driven as him".^[5]

Early life

Joye attended the Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia, and Marlborough College, in the United Kingdom. At Sydney University he received Joint First Class Honours and the University Medal in Economics and Finance while also being a Credit Suisse First Boston scholar, SIRCA scholar, and University Honours scholar. He studied at Cambridge University in 2002 and 2003, where he was a Commonwealth Trust scholarship recipient. He was vice-captain of the Victorian State schoolboys rugby union 1st XV in 1994.

Career

Joye was the principal author of the 380-page 2003 Prime Minister's Home Ownership Task Force Report, which was commissioned by John Howard and overseen by Malcolm Turnbull. This report has influenced analysis of the supply and demand sides of the Australian housing market, and policy formation in respect of improving rigid housing supply, in the years since.^[6]

In 2008, the Rudd government committed $4 billion (subsequently expanded to $20 billion) to a radical policy proposal first developed by Joye and professor Joshua Gans to supply temporary liquidity to Australia's residential mortgage-backed securities market. This idea was backed by the Government's 2020 Summit.^[7]

Australian taxpayers are estimated by Joye to have made around $600 million in realised profits from this policy idea as at April 2013. Joye also estimates taxpayers have earned an additional sum of between $275 million and $550 million in unrealised gains to this point.^[8]

In 2009, The Australian newspaper identified Joye as one of Australia's top 10 "emerging leaders" in its economics category.^[9] In 2007 Joye was selected by The Bulletin magazine as one of Australia's "10 smartest CEOs", and, separately, by BRW Magazine as one of "Australia's top 10 innovators".^[9] In February 2009, Joye was invited by the Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations to present innovative policy solutions on the US housing market's problems to President Obama's administration.^[9]

Joye is recognised as one of the economists who came up with the idea for a "Son of Wallis" financial system inquiry following the 2008 global crisis and was the principal author, alongside five other respected economists, of a detailed op-ed published in The Age in July 2009 calling for this inquiry. The letter was promptly backed by the Shadow Treasurer at the time, Joe Hockey, but rejected by Treasurer Wayne Swan even though subsequent advice from Treasury suggested it was a sound proposal.^[10][11]

It has been speculated in the media that Joye was the author of a speech by current Treasurer Joe Hockey in November 2010 calling for a financial system inquiry, which repeatedly cited Joye's work. Treasurer Hockey announced that David Murray would lead the new inquiry in 2013.^[12][13][14] Joye has been critical of conflicts of interest among the individuals appointed to run the inquiry.^[15]

Joye is currently a contributing editor with the national newspaper the Australian Financial Review, and a director of the fixed-income investment boutique, Smarter Money Investments, which is half owned by the ASX listed Yellow Brick Road Holdings (itself 19 per cent owned by Macquarie Bank). Joye writes about economics, finance, hedge funds, defence, cyber security, central banking policy, asset-allocation, politics, banking, and other areas in financial services and economics reform.^[16] He writes regular opinion pieces but also authors news stories across diverse subjects from finance, technology, to national security. In 2014 the Lowy Institute selected Joye as one of its finalists for its annual media award for his writing on "intelligence and spying issues".^[17]

In 2013 The Australian newspaper's foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, described Joye as "the Fin's most serious analyst on national security matters".^[18] The Herald Sun's senior business columnist, Terry McCrann, has written that he is "pungently accurate" and "Australia's most idiosyncratic economist".^[19] Dr Nicholas Gruen, a prominent Australian economist who chaired the Labor government's Web 2.0 Government Taskforce, describes Joye on Twitter as "one of our best journalists".^[20]

Joye has regularly broken international national security news, including: exclusive interviews with the directors of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), David Irvine,^[21] and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), Ian McKenzie;^[22] the most comprehensive interview ever with the former head of the CIA and NSA, General Michael Hayden, in which he claimed the telco Huawei spies for China;^[23] the news in October 2013 that Huawei would be re-banned by the new Australian government from the $40 billion National Broadband Project despite fevered media reporting that the ban would be lifted;^[24] describing intelligence agencies' evidence that supported the ban for the first time;^[25] and an exclusive interview with the longest-serving director of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, in which he claimed Edward Snowden was being manipulated by Russian intelligence, among many other revelations in the longest interview of his career.^[26]

The Lowy Institute's Rory Medcalf has written, "Anyone remotely interested in security and intelligence issues would have to be living under a rock to have missed this recent interview with the former head of the CIA and the NSA, General Michael Hayden, by Chris Joye of The Australian Financial Review. The interview transcript is itself a trove of open-source intelligence. It has had global media reach, has been picked up by prominent voices in the US policy debate, and various security commentators (including me) have been cited as applauding it".^[27]

Following the interview with General Alexander, the Australian Financial Review's Aaron Patrick wrote: "American intelligence chiefs don’t talk to the press much, including the man once dubbed the most powerful spy in history. That’s why contributing editor Christopher Joye’s interview with former National Security Agency director Keith Alexander in The Australian Financial Review this week received global attention...“The very instructive thing is how an Australian-based journalist can beat the rest of the American and world media on global yarns,” Financial Review editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury wrote in an email to staff praising the article."^[28]

Joye has been critical of individuals illegally stealing and publishing confidential government information, like classified military secrets that are protected under the Crimes Act, without making a clear public interest case.^[29] Alternative commentators have claimed that Joye, alongside other national security experts like Greg Sheridan and Cameron Stewart, is actually a "state identified journalist".^[30]

In December 2013 the idiosyncratic art collector, mathematician, global gambler and owner of the radical $150 million Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), David Walsh, granted Joye a rare interview in which Walsh provided unprecedented details on his personal philosophies and quantitative approach to gambling.^[31] Walsh has subsequently stated that he added a chapter to his recently published personal memoir based on the ideas developed during his interview with Joye.^[32]

In February 2014 Joye published another rare interview with the alleged yet unconvicted organised crime and Sydney entertainment figure, John Ibrahim, via the casual column "Lunch with the AFR". Ibrahim spoke about his personal life and the current generation of gangsters for the first time: "These guys are gutless cowards. The class of 2010 onwards has been the shittiest ever. They’re just plastic gangsters. They drive around in their hotted up cars with gold chains and tattoos and then they go home and sleep at mum’s. They’re all wannabes. It’s disgusting – it’s all disorganised crime." The interview was republished by the Sydney Morning Herald without the Lunch with AFR reference.^[33]

The piece was polarising and praised by some and criticised by others. Walkley award winner Angus Grigg described it as a "wonderful yarn" whereas radio personality Mike Carlton said Joye had flung himself into the "panting, into the warm, sticky embrace of John Ibrahim".^[34] Joye's next Lunch with the AFR column featured an interview with the special forces Victoria Cross winner Mark Donaldson, who discussed his transformation from adolescent misfit to national hero, and what it was like to kill terrorists.^[35]

Joye previously worked as: a director with Rismark International, a research and intellectual property house and asset-backed securities fund manager with a large patent portfolio; a senior analyst focussing on special projects with the Reserve Bank of Australia, which is Australia's central bank; and as an analyst with the investment bank Goldman Sachs, in mergers and acquisitions, in both London and Sydney. Yellow Brick Road, which owns a stake in Smarter Money Investments, is 20% owned by Macquarie Bank and generates most of its revenues by broking home loans for Australian banks.

Joye served as a director of the Menzies Research Centre, a centre-right think-tank, between 2003–07. Prior to taking on his role with the Australian Financial Review, Joye was one of Business Spectator and Property Observer's most popular columnists, where he led debates on housing, asset-allocation, banking, media, monetary policy, and superannuation.^[9]

References