In May 2022, Fawkner Property Chief Investment Officer and founder, Mr Chris Garnaut, led the call for corporate Australia to raise $2 million dollars Australia-wide for the Ukraine Crisis Appeal Resettlement fund, tipping $100,00 into the fund.
In an extended interview with Damon Kitney, The Australian, Chris Garnaut, talks about what drives him and how the Russian invasion of Ukraine motivated him to help displaced Ukrainians and lead the drive to raise money from corporate Australia.
“All of a sudden, I was mortal”
For deeply private and influential Melbourne financial adviser Chris Garnaut, two events – cancer and the Ukrainian war – mean he now makes every day count.
By DAMON KITNEY, The Australian, 7 October 2022
Four years on from winning the biggest battle of his life, Chris Garnaut wants to make every day count. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Aaron Francis
The Ukrainian city of Bucha near Kyiv has become a tragic symbol of the brutality of the seven-month war against the Russian invaders.
In March, 458 bodies were found in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew, including 12 children. On the evening of August 24, a traditional Ukrainian Motonka Doll, made by children rescued from a refuge in Bucha, was the symbolic centrepiece of a gala fundraising event at Melbourne’s Hyatt Hotel to coincide with Ukrainian Independence Day.
Stefan Romaniw, the co-chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations and vice president of the Ukrainian World Congress, took to the stage to present the doll to Melbourne financial adviser Chris Garnaut.
Romaniw described it as “a small but incredible token of appreciation from the Ukrainian community” for the work Garnaut and his Fawkner Property Group had done to support resettling displaced Ukrainians in Australia.
For the past four months the deeply private but influential Melbourne financial adviser has led the call for corporate Australia to raise $2m for the Ukraine Crisis Appeal Resettlement Fund after Fawkner Group tipped $100,000 into the fund in May.
The fund provides support for the resettlement of displaced Ukrainians, including mental health and work-entry programs, and skills programs such as swimming, first aid and driving lessons.
Fawkner Property Group founder Chris Garnaut at a Mirrabooka Square event in May.
“The idea of the August function was one to raise money and, two to ensure we didn’t have Ukraine fatigue in the media,” Garnaut says. “You get this new level of energy when you have a purpose.”
The theme of the night was the Ancient Greek word “Philotimo”, an amalgam of the virtues of honour, integrity, duty, pride, dignity and courage. Garnaut says they accord with his own “life beliefs”.
He was joined at the Hyatt that evening by Ukrainian entrepreneur Alex Vynokur, the founder and chief executive of $21bn fund manager BetaShares, who in July started Australia’s first charity dedicated to supporting victims of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Also in the crowd were the Ukrainian ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, former Trade and Defence Minister Dan Tehan, former Supreme Court judge Jack Rush, Indigenous Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and Melbourne businessman Sir Rod Eddington.
$1.5m has now been raised to support the Ukraine Crisis Appeal Resettlement Fund and Garnaut is confident of meeting the $2m target well before the end of the year to support more than 6000 Ukrainians who have arrived in Australia since February.
Garnaut, Romaniw and Ambassador Myroshnychencko are now planning a Sydney fund-raising event to rival the Melbourne affair, when the City of Melbourne was lit up in Ukrainian colours.
Motivated to act
Ironically when the Fawkner property team launched the “We Stand United for Ukraine” appeal in May 2022 together with Rotary Australia and the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, Garnaut had never met a Ukranian person in his life.
“Now I think they are one of the nicest races of people I have ever had the pleasure to meet,” he says.
The genesis of the appeal was a conversation Garnaut had with Tehan in February, only days after Vladimir Putin had launched his bloody offensive on Kiev.
The Melbourne businessman, a father of two, had already watched enough gruesome images of children caught up in the conflict to want to take action.
“I found them totally disturbing, to the point where I could not watch them. So I thought, “Well, I better just work out what I can do’,” he says.
“I said to Dan, ‘We’ve got to do what we did with Syria. We’ve got to find a way to get as many displaced Ukrainians into the country as we can’.”
A month later Garnaut was discussing the Ukraine war with the manager of Fawkner’s The Square Mirrabooka shopping centre in Perth when she mentioned the number of displaced Ukrainians who had resettled in the shopping centre’s catchment area.
“I suggested we have a sausage sizzle ceremony to welcome them to Australia. Because these are primarily mothers and kids,” Garnaut says.
Thousands turned out to the event, staged in conjunction with the Ukraine Association of WA and the City of Stirling, which also gave Garnaut an introduction to Ambassador Myroshnychencko.
Mirrabooka’s “We Welcome Ukraine” event is now a finalist in the Shopping Centre Council of Australia’s “Best Community Initiative” award, to be announced on October 19.
Garnaut stresses his Ukraine crusade has been a personal one, although Fawkner unit holders were advised of the initiative in an investor briefing in September.
“We have never asked the unit holders for money and never spent their money,” he says.
He says it has also tapped into his Catholic beliefs.
“I have a huge distaste for communism, and the oppression of communism. You can call Russia whatever you like. But it is a communist state and its conduct is reflective of a communist, Soviet state. Most communists are dictators and bullies,” he says. “While this started out as a philosophy, now it has turned into a love.”
Company values
It is now 35 years since Garnaut – the cousin of famed academic Ross Garnaut – formed Garnaut Private Wealth, which provides advice to high net worth individuals and has over $4.4bn in assets.
“We will continue to grow organically, we will never buy another company. For us, it is about cultural fit. The average Garnaut interview process, before you become a client, is five interviews,” he says proudly.
Over the past three years the Garnaut portfolio has delivered a total return of 11.02 per cent versus the ASX 200 at 2.67 per cent.
Even for the past tumultuous year in equities to the end of September, when the ASX 200 fell 7.7 per cent, Garnaut returned 1.85 per cent.
Chris Garnaut is confident of meeting the $2m target well before the end of the year to support more than 6000 Ukrainians who have arrived in Australia. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Aaron Francis
One of the keys to its success has been its focus on investments, both liquid and illiquid, that don’t show high amounts of price volatility. Over the past three years the volatility of the Garnaut portfolio is 7.2 per cent versus 17 per cent for the ASX 200.
“There is a really high care factor and a thoroughness to what we do. We want to provide clients with the ‘sleep at night’ factor,” Garnaut says. “The Garnaut Absolute return theme is about active management and capital preservation, so we look for downside protection, low correlation and alpha generation.”
Fawkner, which is a separate business, has $1.7bn in funds under management and sees itself as a deep value, essential services manager. It now has more than 130 roadside retail, convenience retail and childcare assets.
“Fawkner will continue to grow as long as it sees value in the market. It is a fund manager, not a funds under management (FUM) gatherer. That is really important,” Garnaut says of the firm, which is separately managed by a team led by Owen Lennie.
Fawkner now owns 10 shopping centres after a string of purchases over the past year including The Square Mirrabooka in WA, Traralgon Centre Plaza in Victoria and the Mount Pleasant, Earlville Shopping Town and Stockland Cairns centres in Queensland.
While the deals were driven by the opportunity to purchase assets at discounts to their pre-pandemic valuations, there was also a motivation for Garnaut as the firm’s chief investment manager.
Perhaps it also has underpinned his rich passion to help the people of Ukraine.
Making every day count
The 61-year-old now wants to make every day count, four years since winning the biggest personal battle of his life. He was diagnosed with throat cancer in July 2016.
One of his specialists, who is also a good friend, told him he would die by Christmas that year. The doctor even delivered the grim diagnosis to his family.
But the man himself, who has never smoked a cigarette in his life, would have nothing of it. He started researching his condition and realised his probability of survival was good. He started preparing for laser treatment, which commenced in August 2016.
“It takes two or three weeks to actually build your body kit and the body kit for throat cancer is horrible. But it saves your life. It saves you having radiotherapy all over your face and your body,” he says.
Every Tuesday, for seven weeks, he had laser treatment and chemotherapy.
“I went in real match fit and lost 18kg. But I lost no hair, zero. The only hair I lost was off the back of my neck when the treatment burnt through my throat, through my head and burnt the back of my hair off. I gave up drinking and just had a can of Guinness every Friday. But I lost my taste completely so I couldn’t taste the Guinness anyway,” he says.
“I was exceptionally lucky because my son is involved in Garnaut and I had such brilliant staff that were so capable that both businesses didn’t miss a beat.”
Patrick Garnaut, known as “Patch”, is a Garnaut director. Garnaut’s other son, Elliot, is a famed celebrity fashion stylist.
Their father now continues to get the all clear on his cancer diagnosis. Asked how the experience has changed him, he says he has become “more Christian”.
“I pray more often, I go to church more often,” he says.
He’s even started taking his 86 year old mother, Angela, to her local Anglican Church in the Bayside suburb of Elwood. He says she loves it, despite being a Catholic.
His mother was widowed at the age of only 36 – with nine children in tow – when her husband passed away suddenly. Garnaut was only 12 when he lost his father.
He says his cancer fight has also made him conscious of his own mortality.
“When you are punching along in life and you’re doing okay, you think that you are immortal because you’ve had so many wins. The only time you think that you are not immortal is when you have a few losses,” he says.
“Then along comes a f…king good old life-threatening disease, and you have a real ripping f..king smell of the rosewood in the f..king coffin. All of a sudden, you are mortal,” he says, displaying his trademark penchant for the odd swear-word.
Not once, he says, did he fear death. In fact, despite the initial diagnosis, he never thought he was going to die. But the experience has given him a new lease on life.
“I think it was this sort of ‘f..k this, I’ve had two years off in a holding pattern and there’s no way I am a holding pattern sort of guy. I’m going to go in and absolutely swing this f..king hard’,” he says of Fawkner’s rapid expansion.
“God willing, the timing was perfect. Because when I was ready to go, the opportunities happened to be there for a deep value property manager. And we executed the opportunities.”
