Boardroom Conversations with Larry Marshall

Season 2 Episode 3: Dr Larry Marshall: Net zero challenges, future tech trends and the board’s role in fostering innovation

Dr Larry Marshall FAICD is a director with Fortescue and Nanosonics, plus a former CEO at the CSIRO. We talk about: challenges in the transition to net zero, future technology trends and the board’s role in fostering innovation at their organisation.

Transcript

BENNETT MASON

Hello and welcome to Boardroom Conversations, a podcast from the Australian Institute of Company Directors. My name is Bennett Mason and thanks so much for joining us. In each episode we’ll have candid conversations with some of Australia's top directors, leaders and experts delving into their background and discussing many of the key issues that boards are grappling with. Our guest this time is Doctor Larry Marshall. He was the CSIRO’s longest serving chief executive and is now a director with mining giant Fortescue and medical technology company Nanosonics. He's also the chair of AmCham, the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia and member of the ANU Governing Council and author of the 2023 book Invention to Innovation: How Scientists Can Drive Our Economy. Larry, thanks so much for joining us today.

LARRY MARSHALL

Pleasure to be here.

BENNETT MASON

Now, as we just said, you've had an extraordinary and quite varied career. You left the CSIRO after around about a decade in the top job. Why did you decide to finish your time there?

LARRY MARSHALL

Yeah. So, every CEO has a use by date, and if you're not careful, you become part of the problem. When you wanted to be part of the solution. I left well before that happened, I hope. But when I went into CSIRO and pitched Simon McKeon, who was the chair at the time, my vision for CSIRO was to be an innovation catalyst for Australia, and I really think we moved it so far. It's not quite there yet, but we moved it so far in the right direction, that I felt the organisation, frankly, didn't need me. It had the momentum. It would keep going. And then someone else should step in and take it to the next level. So, I'm really proud of the work the team did, and I continue to look on with great admiration to the current CEO, Doug, and the leadership team. They're doing a fabulous job.

BENNETT MASON

The organisation had a lot of successes during your time there, but are there any achievements you're particularly proud of?

LARRY MARSHALL

Yeah. So, this will sound funny to directors on more traditional companies, but we delivered the first profit in 102 years. Three years in a row, actually, which was, I discovered the second worst sin in government was to make a profit. The first one is to make a loss. So go figure. But no, the really big one was that the organisation had been declining for about three decades, about 32 years.

And we were able to really turn that around, give it significant growth, but also, increase the revenue, the funding by about 400 million a year, the largest increase ever, in any strategy. And that meant 400 million more going into pure science to solve Australia's greatest challenges. So super proud of that. Super proud of the National Missions program we launched because that's what we use that money for, to launch missions for drought and climate change and so on. But not just science, real solutions. But at the same time, we took the organisation about 80% of the way to net zero. And the combination of those two things, driving profitability, and driving emissions down, I think a lot of boardrooms around the country are really grappling with that question. Can you have both? And I think CSIRO really showed that.

BENNETT MASON

You can we'll talk a little bit more about net zero in that journey in a moment. But like we said, you've now left CSIRO, but rather than having a quiet life in retirement, you've taken on many board roles. You're a director with several organisations now. Why did you decide to join those particular boards? What was it about Fortescue or Nanosonics or the ANU that you found particularly interesting or appealing?

LARRY MARSHALL

So, ANU, because it's right in the sort of, if you think of the Valley of Death as being the amazing science and research we have in our 39 universities, if you think of that as being kind of the left-hand side of the valley of death. And industry and finance being the right-hand side of the Valley of Death. I spent most of my career in the middle, trying to get across the Valley of Death. I don't know much about universities, but I knew ANU was in trouble. It needed help. And many universities do at the moment, particularly after Covid. So, I really wanted to lean in there and help and also be part of the selection process of the next, CEO. The next Vice-Chancellor. And I'm so proud we're able to get someone awesome like Genevieve Bell. Absolutely fantastic. Not from central casting for a CEO role, but absolutely perfect for what the ANU needs. So, it's a real privilege working with her and really trying to work on that academic side of the Valley of Death. Nanosonics, amazing Australian success story. It invented a technology to solve a problem for a market that didn't exist. It basically, cleans, probes that go into your body, that weren't cleaned before, if you can imagine that. And use between patients. It came up with a unique solution to solve that problem. Saves lives. grew a market out of out of nothing. And it reminds me so much of my very first company, Iridex, which still manufactures the device I invented 30 years ago. It's still manufacturers it in Mountain View, California. It didn't outsource to China like so many others did. Nanosonics is the same. IT manufacturers right here, in North Ryde, and it ships to the world. And it can do that because the value of the technology is so high that you don't need to look for cheaper labour costs because you've got such a strong competitive advantage. So, I love that company. And then Fortescue. Wow, I never wanted to join a big company board, but Fortescue is extraordinary. It's managed to preserve the hunger of a Start-Up, even though it’s a many tens of billions of dollars value of company. And it's trying to reinvent itself from Australia's oldest industry, mining. It's trying to become an energy company and solve that same problem that we solved at CSIRO. How do you grow profit and get to, not just net zero in Fortescue's case, we set an even bigger ambition. We want to get to real zero. That means no emissions of any kind. That's an extraordinary journey. And frankly, it really needs the best science and technology that we can find to get us there.

BENNETT MASON

We'll touch on some of those companies in particular. But, just chatting a bit more about your career, you've often shifted from CEO to board member or chair and back to CEO, back to board member. Those roles are obviously very different. Have you found it challenging at all to swap between board member to executive and back again?

LARRY MARSHALL

Yeah, it is really challenging because they're quite different skills. In the US, chairman and CEO are often the same person. And I never really understood until I came back to Australia ten years ago how vital it is that they're not the same person. And the AICD does a great job of teaching you why that is. But I think it's a rare case where America could learn a lot from Australian governance on this matter. I really went hard after David Thodey, to be my chair at CSIRO when I lost Simon McKeon. And it took a lot of convincing to bring David in because he wasn't sure whether he could be a chair, having just been a tier one CEO. And he really struggled, but he was phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. But even someone as good as him really, really wrestled with it. So, the challenge is, as a CEO, you want to do everything, you want to be hands-on. You want the ball and as a as a chair, you’ve got to coach the CEO how to get the ball, how to move the ball down the field. You should never put your hands on the ball yourself. And the reason I went back and forth a few times was more out of necessity than anything else. When I was running a fund, if you found your CEO had done something really wrong and you had to fire them or your co-investors looked at you and said: “Hey, Larry, you're the only one that's an experienced CEO around the table. You need to step in.” And so, you'd get thrust into the role. The CSIRO gig was different. I really wanted to do that role. I literally went and pitched Simon McKeon as to why, but I had a real a real vision for what CSIRO could be. So, I really wanted that. But even CSIRO was a little bit like being a chair at times, because it's so big. And David found this at Telstra as well. You have multiple divisions, multiple big business units. They're almost run by CEOs themselves. And often your job is to corral those strong personality leaders in those business units and help them see reason for the greater good of the entity.

BENNETT MASON

Do you think being a former board member made you a better CEO? And do you think now being a former CEO has made you a better company director?

LARRY MARSHALL

Absolutely. Yeah, I think experienced CEOs who know they're not the CEO in the room when they're on a board, I think bring huge value to boards because they've lived the CEO’s pain. They empathise, they understand, and they're able to add very tangible, practical value as long as they remember they're not the CEO. And a good CEO will remind them and sometimes very, sometimes very directly. But yeah, helped hugely. The other thing that helped hugely was being a chair and running a fund, because coming into CSIRO, there was so much governance around a large statutory authority. I wouldn't have been able to deal with that if I hadn't had the chair experience or running a fund and being responsible and accountable for large sums of other people's money. That governance again. I just think governance in Australia is really top shelf. I don't know if people realise how good we are here at that, but I've learnt so much in the decade that I've been back in Australia. I spent most of my career in the US. I do think the Americans could learn a lot from us.

BENNETT MASON

You talked about, David Thodey and Simon McKeon, your two chairs of the CSIRO. You obviously had a close relationship with them, and we know that the CEO-chair relationship can be crucial to an organisation's effectiveness. What do you think is the secret, as it were, to a good relationship between CEO and chair?

LARRY MARSHALL

So, it's different for every CEO. So, I was on about 25 boards of Start-Ups companies that I invested in. And for about five of those, I was chair of, or I ended up as chair of. Sometimes the founder-CEO is a techie and not that experienced a business. And in that case, obviously as chair, you're going to lend your business acumen to them and you're going to coach them. So, you'll be a little bit more in the mentor side of the equation. Other times they were a really experienced CEO. And you’re less of a mentor more of a judge. And David and Catherine Livingstone and some of the amazing chairs that I've worked with have this gift for knowing which chair to be, at what time and when to when to shift. David has a gift of, as a chair or a CEO, dealing with someone who hasn't delivered. David has a gift of making you feel guilty that you didn't deliver for him. Almost taking it personally. Doesn't berate you, doesn't attack you, but he makes you feel like you wish you had done better. And then years later, he'll tell you: “By the way, you did so well.” You had no idea, but you always feel guilty. But that's a magic of a really good chair. But also knowing when to lean in and when to help, when the problem is too hard. Sometimes CEOs want to hold the ball, want to totally run with it themselves. And winners often do. A good chair can tell when it's too much, and will lean in and say: “No, no, you can't do this alone. Let me help you.” And again, David and Catherine are gifted at knowing that. And so, I've learnt so much from them as great chairs.

BENNETT MASON

I want to ask you a little bit now about some governance issues, some topics that boards are grappling with. You mentioned the transition to net zero before, and we know that climate change is a major issue for boards. You worked on that a lot at the CSIRO. And of course, it's a major focus for Fortescue too. We know that mandatory climate reporting is on the horizon. What's your advice for boards and directors on how to prepare for those new measures?

LARRY MARSHALL

So, we've seen a lot of grand claims being made. In the last sort of 2 or 3 years, people promising to be net zero by 2025 and so on. I think as the years have gone on; people have begun to realise how hard that is to do. David and I and John Lydon were some of the founding members, the inaugural members of the Climate Leaders Coalition. That's the Australian version of the B team. And we report pretty honestly with each other. When you look at that list, there's some great achievements there in terms of emissions reduction, but no one has made a significant reduction in the five years that we've been we've been running with that. With CSIRO being the exception, perhaps. So, I think we're learning that it's a lot harder to do. ANU made very grand claims. And with the change in leadership, Genevieve did a great thing of looking at it honestly and coming back to the market and saying: “You know what? We're not going to be able to do this. So, we're going to rethink.” I think we should see more CEOs doing that. Having the moment of: “Let’s be honest about how hard this is.” What we've seen up until now has been CEOs trying to outbid each other, trying to out commit each other.” Very few companies have made progress beyond signing PPAs because they have office buildings, and they buy electricity in a city. If you're a company that's got widely distributed rural property, you're going to find it incredibly difficult to get there. And the sooner we are honest about that, then the sooner we can start working together to figure out how to solve it. And remember, we all have to get to net zero together. It doesn't really matter if one of us does and the rest of us don't. So, I think being brutally honest about where you are and treating it as rigorously as you treat financial reporting, which of course, the government will require in the next couple of years anyway. But you should do that as a matter of principle, because if you don't, you'll lose trust from your customers. Incredibly hard to earn, trust. Incredibly easy to lose it.

BENNETT MASON

You said that many organisations are now finding that transition to net zero harder than expected. What do you think that is?

LARRY MARSHALL

So, I think for various reasons, the public have believed that it's all about electricity. So solar and wind will get you to net zero. But unfortunately, the reality is electricity is only a third of our emissions problem. And even with the growth of electric cars and other things, eventually it might become half a problem. But it's not the whole problem. And fundamentally, the other two thirds are from our industries, which have been built on the nature of energy that comes from fuels. Be it gas, be it fossil fuels. That that chemical energy releases energy really rapidly in a way that batteries and electricity simply can't do. And so, we have to reinvent those industrial processes to work on something that doesn't emit carbon. And that hasn't really been done yet. And I think most CEOs are learning that, working that out now. Fortescue for example, it can build. It is building its own grid. It's building massive wind farms, massive solar farms, because there are no PPAs in the Pilbara. But at the same time, two thirds of their emissions come from bulk carriers that burn diesel fuel. Remote diesel gensets that are far away from any grid, even theirs. And the industrial process of turning iron ore into steel uses massive amounts of coal. That's not a solved problem yet, and electrification isn't really the solution for that one.

BENNETT MASON

Fortescue and its executive chair, Andrew Forrest, are very focussed on green hydrogen. Now can you explain in simple terms because I know you've got a physics PhD, but not everyone in the audience will. In simple terms, what is green hydrogen and how can it help not just Fortescue, but the whole planet, move towards net zero.

LARRY MARSHALL

So, it's dead in the centre of that fuels problem. So, hydrogen is a great source of chemical energy, and it is a very good replacement for gas and diesel, where you can't electrify, where you need those energy characteristics. The green hydrogen comes from solar energy, being turned into electricity that literally splits the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. So, in principle it’s very simple, and it's a 100% zero emissions process. But in practice, it's wickedly hard to do. And Fortescue has made some amazing breakthroughs on solving some of the really wicked challenges. But that's probably for me on the board, that's one of the areas I've really probably had the most value, understanding the science and technology. But also, the ability to innovate, the ability to turn that science into something commercially viable and to generate revenue. When we solve that problem, then no mining company will need diesel fuel anymore. No mining company will need gas and we'll be able to produce our own hydrogen domestically in Australia rather than importing it from Saudi Arabia. That's super important because at the moment we import all of our solar panels and our wind turbines and so on from China. We're very, very heavily exposed, and dependent there. So, we need to be able to make something ourselves to balance the scales.

BENNETT MASON

What do you think the blockages are to Australia becoming a green hydrogen superpower, and how can those obstacles be overcome?

LARRY MARSHALL

Well, Australia used to be a cheap energy place. We had one of the lowest costs of energy in the Western world. We're not there anymore. For various reasons, we've moved the other way. The United States also has a similar problem, but they implemented the Inflation Reduction Act, which has the effect of significantly lowering their cost of energy. So, when Fortescue looks at a hydrogen project, it's very hard for us to do one domestically in Australia. Most of our projects so far have been in the US or in Europe or in other countries. We would love to do one in Australia, but we've got to work with the government to get the price of energy down. Otherwise, shareholders can't tolerate us doing a project as a loss leader. We need to at least break even.

BENNETT MASON

Innovation is another area that you've been passionate about for many years, and there's an important role for boards there, too. How do you think directors can ensure their organisations are really embracing a culture of innovation?

LARRY MARSHALL

I think Australian boards and directors do a fabulous job of reading about what's going on in the world. Most directors know that if you haven't done a digital transformation yet, you're probably too late. You should have done it. But it's never too late. Do it now. And each year you get a buzzword, cyber security awareness. The current one, of course, is generative, artificial intelligence. I think the trick is to look ahead of the curve and try and figure out what I need to be doing a couple of years from now and do it now. Because the pace of technology, it's an exponential change. And we all experience exponentials in Covid. The trouble with an exponential is by the time you notice it's competing with you; it's already raced past you. So as a director, your job is to be up on the balcony looking out at the future because the management team are often so buried in running the organisation that they can't get the context. So as a director, I think you can add enormous value by bringing that vision. And the best way to get that is when you're on a number of boards, you recognise patterns. You also see different areas of technology and market shifts that seem unrelated. But as a director standing on the balcony, looking out at the world, you can often see the points of intersection before they happen. And if you can flag that to the rest of the board and the management team, it's a fabulous outcome. I think the other thing that Australian boards are starting to do much better is understand the real value of diversity. Turning an invention into innovation is all about having the right market vision, understanding the market and how it's going to move, and how your invention can make it move in a way that people didn't expect, so that you're the only one that has the right product when the market does move. Market vision is hard, and the only way I know to get it is to have a diverse group of people who can share very different ways of looking at the world. And if you can corral all those insights, they will together show you a way. They'll give you a vision. Human beings tend to hire people that are like themselves. So historically, boards have hired people like themselves. I think Australian boards have started to really wake up to the fact that if we want to be innovative, we've got to hire very different people. And so, I think that's another thing you can bring to the board table. Not just diversity for gender or not just one dimension, but multiple dimensions. One of the things I'm really excited about is seeing boards realise, actually, it's not bad to have a scientist on the board. That's something that we haven't seen before, I don't think.

BENNETT MASON

Why do you think we haven't seen more scientists on boards? We see plenty of lawyers, doctors, actuaries, accountants, and they're all fine. But why do you think we're not seeing more people with a STEM background like yourself in Australia's boardrooms?

LARRY MARSHALL

Two reasons. I think one, and I saw this a lot as an investor, oftentimes a scientist is un-investable. They're too brilliant. They can see too many possibilities, but they can't corral it down to a single direction. And that will frustrate the hell out of a board. So, I think boards, quite rightly, are very careful because they don't. Boards got to act as one. So, they don't want too much disruption. They do need to embrace different. But not in a way that's disruptive to the board acting as a single entity. I think what boards need to look for is that really rare and unique combination of a person with a technical background who's taken the time to actually understand business, ideally create a business, live through that pain. To me, that's the magic because then you tend to get balance. You take the genius inside of science and balance it with the reality of business. So, I think boards are going step by step as they should. They're learning as they go, but I'm pleased to see that that they're starting to do that. Scientists, unfortunately, still don't really get trained to think the way a businessperson does. In fact, they get trained to think opposite the way. And I know that sounds like a brash claim, but if you read a technical paper, you have to read the whole thing to understand what it's trying to tell you. You have to get all the way to the end to get to the conclusion. When you read a business plan, they tell you right up front what the conclusion is, and then they work backwards to tell you how they got to it. Almost every aspect of how we're trained as scientists is the opposite of the way we're trained for business. You do tend to have to unlearn your scientific training in some aspects, to learn how to become a business leader.

BENNETT MASON

What is it the STEM professionals can contribute to a board beyond whatever their particular expertise might be?

LARRY MARSHALL

I can't tell you how many times around the board, for example, at Fortescue, where I've been listening to the team wrestling with the problem and been able to say: “Actually, I saw a technology that will do X and I think it'll work.” Now, I’ve an unusual background, having run CSIRO and Start-Ups. But I think that's one of the unique values the science background brings. You can see the connection where others may not see that connection between something on the lab bench and something in business. I think the other thing where, scientists can really help and engineers can really help too, for that matter, this problem of getting to net zero. It's wicked hard. How do you even measure it? How do you mitigate it? How do you adapt to it? I think someone with a STEM background can really help the boardroom figure out what their risk exposure is to climate change, and how to reinvent the business so that it can be at least as successful, but ideally more successful in a world of net zero and in a world impacted by climate change than we are than we are today. It's very hard to throw that needle without deep technical understanding.

BENNETT MASON

This ties a little bit into the title of your book, which is Invention to Innovation: How Scientists Can Drive Our Economy. What is the answer to that, Larry? What is the role of scientists in in boosting growth in Australia?

LARRY MARSHALL

So often we're in catch up mode as a country. Even when we invent something extraordinary, historically we've been afraid to commercialise it. Wi-Fi and solar panels are classic examples. Firstly, our history is that we confuse invention with innovation. We call it the innovation system in Australia, but it's really the academic system, the invention system. We have an innovation system, but it's pretty nascent. It's getting better. But we're still 72nd in the world for innovation. We're a long way, a long way behind the curve. I think historically industries like mining and agriculture we’re really strong in but they're going to be disrupted by technology. And again, boards with their balcony level view, their whole picture systems-level view of the world can actually help management teams see those disruptions. And I think you have to be willing to take a bit more risk than we have done historically in order to disrupt yourself. But because of the nature of these exponential changes in technology, if we don't take the risk to disrupt ourselves, someone else will do it for us, and there's often no recovery from that. So, the risk is higher. Whether you set it higher or not, it's higher on the outside because your competitors are coming at you out of other industries that you didn't even think of as competitive. So, you've got to dial your own internal risk appetite up. And that's uncomfortable for boards, particularly of companies that are being very successful. What I love about Fortescue is it's an incredibly successful company, but it's never satisfied. It's always trying to become more. It's always trying to reinvent itself. It's always challenging itself. That's something that normally you only see in Start-Ups. I've only seen that characteristic in big companies twice before. Once in Apple and once in Google. And I didn't expect to see it in a mining company. But there you go.

BENNETT MASON

You've worked in a lot of different nations and jurisdictions. Is there a country that has the right approach to these things: innovation, invention, R&D? And what can we in Australia learn from that example?

LARRY MARSHALL

I spent most of my career in Silicon Valley. And most people, I think, answer that question with Silicon Valley or Israel. And Israel is extraordinary. But neither one of them are very much like Australia. My personal favourite is Canada. It's the same size. It's got a similar economic structure, similar resources, industry and so on. But they've done some extraordinary things. And I'll give you a stat. In Canada, 40% of businesses come from Start-Up type innovation. Deep tech or technical or science innovation, 40%. In Australia it's 1%. So, the Canadians are doing something right. And when I was running CSIRO, I became very good friends with Ian, the CEO of the Canadian version of CSIRO, the NRC in Canada. Often, we had them talk to our government about what they learned when they tried things that our government was unwilling to try. So, it doesn't always have to be Silicon Valley. Why is it so important? Because if you have a similar culture, culture is what determines if innovation works or not. The best strategy, the best ideas, who you are, what you stand for, what you believe in, is ultimately going to determine the success or failure. Canada has a very similar culture to us. Things that work there tend to work here.

BENNETT MASON

You've talked about the importance of boards having that balcony-level view, looking at trends, looking at emerging and new technologies. We know that AI is dominating the headlines now, but what are some of those trends and technologies that you're looking at over the horizon?

LARRY MARSHALL

AI is dominating. And we use AI extensively in Fortescue and it's increasing productivity incredibly. So, it's a very powerful business tool. But it is just a tool like, like any other technical tool. I think where we're going to see big changes is around energy technology. We don't have the energy source we need to navigate the transition. And if Australia can invent just a piece of that solution that's massively valuable. The other convergence I'm seeing, and often disruption happens at the intersection of two technologies. I think quantum is being a little bit missed. We don't have a quantum computer yet. But you can do a lot with a single qubit. Most companies, most countries can build a single qubit. You can do amazing things with that. Not a computer, but other things. You put AI and quantum together, you have something that looks a lot more like a human brain than AI does on its own. So, the ability to do parallel processing, associative memory. And then using not generative AI, but machine learning type AI, you can accelerate the breeding of crops. You can accelerate the development of new materials. You can turn a seven-year breeding cycle into a two-year cycle. So, if you're in agriculture in Australia, which we're very strong at, and we're very strong in genetics, artificial intelligence will accelerate that. And then finally, new materials. To do what we need to do with energy transition, we don't really have the materials we need. Australia surprisingly, has strong capability in materials science, primarily from our academic sector, but also from our resources sector. There's an opportunity here for us to step up the ladder one step above commodities to shipping, not finished products. I don't think that needs to be what we do. But turning that commodity, that raw material, into the next level of value, where you get a 10X increase in value without too much exposure. And it's very hard to compete with you because you own the source of material. So, you can do it if you can achieve the energy cost that you need.

BENNETT MASON

Larry, I want to end by asking you about Start-Ups. You've been involved in Start-Ups in lots of roles, whether it was your own companies, CEO, you were a board member, you were an investor. How can Start-Ups ensure that they've got the right governance measures in place? And when is the right time to consider bringing in independent directors and a board?

LARRY MARSHALL

Every one of my Start-Ups, I had an independent director from the beginning. Not so much for the governance reason, but I wanted a market guru. Someone who had spent a lot of time in that market, who could bring me that, help me with that market vision that I talked about earlier. Because again, seeing the market is how you find success as a Start-Up. And the best invention in the world won't become innovation without that market vision. And then as the Start-Up grew, once we got to 100-plus people, definitely I was looking more for governance expertise from my board members. And if the market visionary couldn't transition, and often they can't, that's when I'd go out and find another board member. I worked with fantastic venture capitalists though. VCs are very good examples of good board members. They rarely get into the weeds in the boardroom. Believe me, if they need to, they will. And I do that too, right? I go deep if I need to, but like most directors, I try to avoid that because I want the management team to solve the problem and I want to put my attention to strategy and where the market is going. Governance, though in a Start-Up is really delicate because too much process, too early, too much control can really crush a Start-Up. But the right level of control can actually free it. And I think that's what a lot of Start-Up founders don't realise is governance is a good thing. It can really be your friend. But it has to be applied slightly differently in a Start-Up to obviously a big established company, and there's a bit of a continuum between the two. It's really fun. I was able to grow a couple of companies and IPO them in the US. It's really fun to go on that journey and listen to people whine and complain about governance, and then thank God that they had it when something goes wrong. And so gradually becoming more mature, more aware. Again, I've said this before, I sent a lot of my CEOs when I was an investor back to Australia to do the AICD course, because I think they learnt more from that than they did from the equivalent course in the US. More practical, more real, on the ground application of governance in a way that creates value.

BENNETT MASON

We're always happy to hear someone talk up the AICD courses. Larry, thank you very much. You've had some great advice and you've been very generous with your time. So, thank you for speaking with Boardroom Conversations.

LARRY MARSHALL

Pleasure to be here and love what you guys do.