How footy, not money, buys happiness for Pies’ president
There’s the controversial Collingwood presidency, robust public spats and an $8bn fund to run. But also a rekindled love story 30 years in the making and realisation that money isn’t everything.
It is known as the biggest, baddest pick-up truck on the planet.
RAM’s 1500 TRX - an abbreviation for the famed king of the dinosaurs, the Tyrannosaurus Rex - lives up to its moniker with a thumping 6.2 litre Supercharged V8 engine that can go from 0 to 100kph in less than five seconds.
The one owned by Collingwood football club president Jeffrey Browne carries a black and white number plate adorned with a magpie emblem and the letters SIDBYS - shorthand for the club’s signature slogan, Side-by-Side.
“I am always flying the flag,” he quips to kick-off an interview over an alcohol-free lunch at the suave Bacash restaurant in South Yarra.
The life-long magpie fan played 22 games for the Collingwood Under 19’s in 1972. His brother Murray played 47 senior games in the 1980s.
For the past 18 months Browne has been the club’s 14th president after rolling his predecessor, Korda Mentha co-founder Mark Korda, in a carefully orchestrated coup in late 2021.
Right now Browne is riding high as the club sits atop the Australian Football League ladder after a stunning start to the 2023 season.
“You’ve got to love footy and you’ve got to love the Collingwood football club. I’ve enjoyed coming back and giving some form to my passion for the club, in leading the changes that we’ve made in the last 18 months,” he declares.
“When I came in, I had not been on the board before. So I had to spend a bit of time listening, watching and really biding my time on a lot of issues that I thought needed to be addressed.
“That was difficult for me to be that patient. But I knew I had to sift through it carefully and build the team and make the changes.
“It changed the way we all thought about ourselves.”
While now best known for his role at Collingwood, the 66 year old has long been one of the more colourful characters of Australian sport and business, boasting one of the best Rolodexes in the country.
Browne, a lawyer who was the AFL’s external legal counsel for almost two decades, earned the moniker “Buckets” when he was Eddie McGuire’s cost-cutting 2IC at Channel Nine in 2006 after observing that “a TV network is just a bucket of contracts”, as he went around slashing the multi-million dollar salaries of its top stars.
Four years later Nine’s then CEO David Gyngell made him managing director.
Browne has also had two stints chairing online auto juggernaut Carsales, including orchestrating its seamless transition in leadership from founding chief executive Greg Roebuck to Cameron McIntyre.
Boardroom ascent
Today, Browne is chairman of the ASX listed MA Financial Group (MAF) - previously known as Moelis Australia - which has evolved to be largely a funds management group with more than $8bn under management.
Its smaller investment banking arm retains the Moelis name.
“I like the people. I like the industry. I like the growth story, I think we have incredible opportunities to build out big influence in real estate asset management, hospitality, credit and lending,” he says of MAF, whose vice-chairman is former JPMorgan and UBS investment banker Andrew Pridham - also chairman of the Sydney Swans football club.
“We have a rule at board meetings that we are not allowed to talk about football for more than three minutes,” Browne quips.
“But that’s made even difficult because Sydney director Alex Goodfellow is also on the board of MAF, while the most recent director we appointed was (Greater Western Sydney Giants director) Nikki Warburton.”
Browne is also chairman of the Walkinshaw Automotive Group, which converts American RAM Trucks and Chevrolet Silverados to right-hand-drive at its Melbourne manufacturing facility.
It also has significant motor sport interests in Australia and the UK.
Browne retains the role following a pledge he made to the group’s founder and racing industry legend Tom Walkinshaw, who passed away in 2010 after a battle with cancer. Greg Roebuck is also on the board.
“I’d been on the board and prior to his death, when he knew the extent of his illness, Tom asked me to chair the business. We talked a lot about what the future looked like and what he wanted out of that,” Browne says.
“His son Ryan is now the CEO of the business and I’ve spent quite a bit of time with him. He’s responded to the role outstandingly and has proven himself as a top flight CEO of what is a very large private company.”
But Browne was arguably best known in recent years in newspaper and magazine headlines as the husband of Perth rich-lister property investor and philanthropist, Rhonda Wyllie.
After five years as a couple, the pair were married on Wyllie’s farm outside Perth in a lavish ceremony over the Easter weekend in 2018 with powerbrokers from television, sport, music, politics and media attending.
But they quietly separated in 2020 when Browne first returned to Sydney for six months, and then to his spiritual home of Melbourne, where he purchased a $4m-plus home in Brighton.
In his first public comments on the break-up, he chooses his words carefully, first acknowledging it was isolating living in Perth for many years.
“I did miss my family. I was very happy living in Perth with the person I was living with. It just didn’t work out. I’m sad about that. But what you do is you pick yourself up and dust yourself off and get going again and I’m back in Melbourne with my children and grandchildren,” he says slowly.
“One thing I have learned about that is money does not buy your happiness or bring you happiness and I know that from first-hand experience.
“What is important in your life is the quality of the relationships you have, especially with family. You can have enough money to be able to do the things you want to do but huge wealth or excessive wealth doesn’t add much more to what most people can happily achieve in their lives with far less resources.”
Browne is now back together with former Crown Resorts executive Ann Peacock, whom he first dated nearly three decades ago.
“We’ve reconnected in the most beautiful way and I’m so grateful to have Ann who has really changed me for the better.”
Sports law pioneer
Browne grew up in working class Greensborough in Melbourne’s northeast suburbs and got into the law by accident.
“I didn’t go to a private school. I made my first bike from spare parts I salvaged from the tip. My father worked two or three jobs and always looked out for us at home,” he says proudly.
“I didn’t have anyone in my family in the law. I went to law school just because someone took advantage of me in a deal, I didn’t like it and I wanted to get revenge.”
He founded Browne & Co Solicitors and Consultants before working for the AFL for two decades, helping establish competition agreements for all clubs, a racial vilification policy, the players’ collective bargaining agreements, and brokering media rights deals.
Through the work he pioneered what he calls “sports law” practice.
“I was unorthodox I guess to start with but then that morphed into entertainment and a whole lot of other areas where the law really had not penetrated,” he says.
Browne and then AFL executive Ben Buckley actually gave AFL chief executive-elect Andrew Dillon a start in the organisation 23 years ago when they interviewed him for a role in its commercial operations team.
“We all agreed that the AFL needed an in-house lawyer to help what my firm was doing externally. We very happily chose Andrew as someone who was obviously intelligent, loved his footy and we thought would be a very good choice. I think we’ve been proven right,” Browne says.
His ascension to the Collingwood presidency role two years ago was controversial as he went hard against what he claimed was a lack of leadership at the club.
He now says he has no regrets about “shaking things up” and being “pretty aggressive”.
But he does offer an olive branch to Mark Korda, who appointed emerging Collingwood super-coach Craig McRae and highly respected football boss Graham Wright to their roles.
“I was the one that called Mark before last year’s annual general meeting to tell him that the club was going to bestow life membership on him, which we did. You’ve got to get over any squabbles we had and look back at his 14 years of service. The club was in good financial shape when I arrived and he was largely responsible. So I think he deserves credit for that.”
Browne says his first task after taking over was to build out what he calls - in television parlance – “the tentpoles or the spine” of a successful club: The Captain, the Coach, the Football Manager, the CEO, and the Chair. Then he set out to “break down silos and get rid of the egos.”
“We all like each other, respect each other and trust each other. I have never attended a team meeting or an executive meeting I don’t need to as I trust those whose job it is to execute their roles,” he says, adding that he rarely attends the club rooms after matches because “that is the coach and players’ space”.
Setting the culture, he says, has been about “understanding how each of us thrive and contribute at our best, how we impact and are accountable to each other - as a team - right across the board”.
“We structure and coach what we do, what we say, what we prioritise and measure, what we applaud and what we condemn. Our statement after the Swans match on booing Lance Franklin was an example of the latter, signed by those at the coalface,” he says.
Browne’s Collingwood ascension also reunited him in football with AFL chairman Richard Goyder, with whom he has shared a common cause - fighting diabetes.
Both have long been on the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Australia.
Goyder has a son, Will, who is 24 and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was eight. Browne has two adult children from his first marriage with the same condition.
His daughter, Sarah, 38, was diagnosed when she was 15 months old and his son Tom, 39, was when he was 30.
“I’ve got to know Richard and I respect him greatly. He has led the board for several years through various budgets and funding for the clinical research networks, which is really important to try and find a cure for diabetes, but also to make life easier for people who are suffering,” Browne says.
Tom Browne has been the Seven Network’s chief football reporter for 12 years. But don’t expect to ever see him interviewing his father. They live by a golden rule that it will never happen - on or off the record.
“There’s a popular view that he gets inside information from me,” the father says bluntly.
“But his greatest frustration in his career is the fact that I won’t talk to him about football.”
Complex character
Browne has plenty of supporters, but also critics who describe him as egotistical. While he’s capable of great charm, some who have been on the receiving end of it say he has a fiery temper.
Yet the man himself makes no regrets for playing hard at times in business and football. He stresses it is never personal.
“I don’t think I’m a bully. I think I’ve had to be tough. But I haven’t bullied anybody. I remember I was probably more of a smart-arse when I was a bit younger. I used to go and sit in a meeting with senior lawyers from big firms around a table arguing about something. And I’d say ‘F ***!’ They couldn’t believe how insulting I could be. But I knew I could get their attention,” he says with a grin.
“I’m sure I have made enemies but there is no-one that causes me any difficulty. I don’t know of anyone who I wouldn’t talk to. There may be people who don’t want to talk to me but that won’t keep me awake at night.”
Browne says his greatest strength in life comes from his upbringing, which made him want to work hard.
“I didn’t necessarily set out to want to be successful, but I wanted to be happy doing something that was worthwhile. Any success I have had started way back when we didn’t have much success.”
Asked what is his greatest weakness, there is a long pause before he deflects the question with a joke about his fetish for vintage fast cars.
His collection includes a 2000 Ferrari Maranello 550 once owned by Lindsay Fox, an iconic 1985 Porsche Turbo and a 1965 Mustang Fastback.
But pressed for an answer, he replies: “We all have regrets. I have regrets. But if you don’t have regrets, you are not human. I’ve made mistakes. But as I’ve said to people involved in my football club, you should not be defined by your mistakes. You should be defined by how you recover from them. So whenever I’ve had a setback, I think I’ve been able to rebuild.”
Brown’s Melbourne-based mother, Eril, is still going strong at 91 years of age. She drives her car most days to the local shops.
But he lost his then 88 year old father, Gerald, the week before he married Rhonda Wyllie in March 2018.
Browne junior has often been described as a chip-off-the-old block. It remains the greatest regret of his life that he never got to say goodbye to his dad.
“He was going right to the end, but he’d had enough and he wanted to go. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it back from Perth before he died. He went in the middle of the night,” he says softly.
“I saw him after he died and spoke to him about a few things that I wanted to talk to him about. I just hope he was out-of-body listening to me somewhere.”
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