Brian Gaynor

Brian Gaynor, a distinguished business commentator and investment company co-founder, died on Monday after a brief illness.

“Brian was one of the founders of our company in 2003. “On behalf of NZX, we send our sympathies and thoughts to Brian’s family and the team at Milford.” “Brian would be one of most influential people in the 150-year history of New Zealand’s capital markets and the NZX,” Miller said in a statement. “Brian was a highly visible leader with a first-class intellect who was passionate about capital markets and the role they played in the wider economy.” “Brian was a driving force of both our organisation and our industry, and we will remember him as a leader, a mentor and a friend.” He had also been a partner and head of research at Jarden, a member of the New Zealand stock exchange, chair of the New Zealand Society of Investment Analysts and chair of the Asian Securities Analysts Council.

One of the titans of New Zealand's capital markets, Brian Gaynor, passed away this morning, after a brief illness.

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Veteran sharebroker, investment analyst, fund manager, and business writer Brian Gaynor has died after a short illness.

He was also critical of the timidity of regulators over the enforcement of financial sector rules or the reluctance of policy makers to act. The NZ Shareholders' Association awarded him its Beacon Award for his advocacy for the interests of small retail investors. Gaynor was noted for his willingness to push back against major companies and their boards, such as Fletcher Building, for their decisions and the treatment of their shareholders.

Everybody in the business community read Brian Gaynor. Stockbroker, sharemarket analyst, co-founder of Milford Asset Management and long-time Herald and B.

"I'd come in from a trip to Australia and the guy at Customs wouldn't let me in unless I gave him sharemarket tips. "People didn't believe the sharemarket would fall in the 80s," he told the Herald in 2016. In his final column for the Herald in 2019 he noted his own commitment to two core principles. In his speech accepting the award in 2020, Gaynor noted that he had been observing the NZ capital markets for 44 years and that he divided that time into two periods: pre-2001 was "the Dark Age" and since then "a More Enlightened Age". The other principle was to never use the words "I" and "me". He was determined to keep his ego out of the story and let the facts speak for themselves. From the sale of Lion Nathan, the break-up of Fletcher Challenge to the attempts to buy Auckland International Airport and Infratil, Gaynor was in the thick of it all.

Gaynor co-founded Milford Asset Management, and was a major shareholder in BusinessDesk.

Brian Gaynor, co-founder of Milford Asset management, stock market analyst, commentator and investment industry leader, has died after a short illness.

“Brian was one of the founders of our company in 2003. He had incredible market knowledge, history and insights.” Although he was instrumental in building Milford into one of the country’s most successful fund managers, Ireland-born Gaynor was perhaps best known for his regular and influential weekly columns.

The NZX was among those honouring fund manager and financial commentator Brian Gaynor today, acknowledging his "immense contribution to capital markets over ...

We'll miss him terribly." He had incredible market knowledge, history and insights," Peterson said. "While I never convinced him that passive was best, and he never convinced me the other way, I always respected him and his arguments." "He was forthright in nature and a powerful voice in the market. "Culturally he was aligned to the values we have and he was a strong supporter. "The values, commitment and skill he applied to the firm and our people were instrumental in creating the organisation we have today," the company said in a statement.

Brian Gaynor, business commentator and co-founder of Milford Asset Management, died on May 16 after a short illness. His colleagues expressed their deepest ...

Gaynor was the founder and longtime leader of Milford Asset Management, a wealth manager and Kiwisaver provider that produced impressive and award-winning ...

“He was a person who I met on a number of occasions and listened to carefully, and I was always impressed with Brian’s ability to weigh up the different sides of an argument. This is despite Stubbs and Simplicity having been the subject of a brutal column by Gaynor just a few months prior. Through a column he wrote on Saturdays for the New Zealand Herald, he produced hundreds of diligently researched columns that managed to go deep into listed companies, the housing market and other financial matters, with the rare ability to bring lay people and the finance industry along with him.

If it weren't for Brian Gaynor, there would be no BusinessDesk. His investment, just over three years ago, transformed a business wire service that had run ...

I recall ringing Brian to remonstrate about a column roundly attacking the proposal, and his response. He was deeply sceptical about the idea that allowing nationally significant assets to be sold to offshore owners was in NZ's best interests. He came to NZ from Ireland "with a rucksack on my back" and ran out of money. "We had very weak regulators at the time, to the extent that the Securities Commission really didn't have any statutory powers in terms of prosecution," he told the Spinoff's Michael Andrew last year, discussing the 1980s. In some cases, enmities ran deep and both ways. Can't quite believe it." "They could write reports and make recommendations about new laws that should be introduced. Such was his tendency to forthright expression that while Brian had a massive following as a columnist first in NBR, then the NZ Herald for more than 22 years, and then with BusinessDesk, he excited strongly held views in return. He was a capitalist, and a flinty one when negotiating a deal and insisting on the letter of it. Just last week, a contemporary of Brian's from those times described him to me as "one of the investment gurus" of the 1980s investment world – a surprise when his own description of his entry into the investment world was that it was an accident. He was the small investor's champion, a campaigner for a fairer but also more vibrant investment environment, and very often the scourge of the top end of town for expressing views that were often unpopular, iconoclastic and emphatically expressed. Driven and restlessly energetic, he was one of the NZX's greatest champions, in that he deeply opposed the loss of major listings to offshore exchanges, but also one of its harshest critics, precisely because of his ambitions for what he felt it could or should be.