Media Super Chair Gerard Noonan to retire

Gerard Noonan blog

Long-serving Chair of Media Super Gerard Noonan is retiring as Chair at the end of the month as the $6bn fund continues its due diligence in merger talks with $52bn fellow industry fund Cbus.

The incoming Chair is Susan Heaney, a prominent printing industry employer representative from Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Ms Heaney, current Deputy Chair of Media Super, has been on the fund’s board since 2013 and was its Audit and Risk Committee Chair.

Mr Noonan, a former editor of The Australian Financial Review, was originally appointed Chair of Media Super in 2008 after the merger of the two industry funds Print Super and JUST Super.

Print Super covered printing and visual arts employees, while JUST Super covered journalists, actors, musicians and entertainment workers.

“It’s been great fun and we’ve been privileged to play a fiduciary role in one of the great financial experiments in Australia for the past century,” Noonan says.

“Industry funds like Media Super have provided the best performing superannuation offerings to millions of Australians – lean, low cost and earning our members on average more than seven per cent every single year over the past three decades in the Balanced investment option.”

“Beat that if you can.”

Mr Noonan, a winner of the prestigious Walkley Award for journalism in 2007, worked at both the Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald for many years.

He also served as president of both the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors and the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees and was a board member of the Federal Government’s advisory body, Innovation Australia.

Mr Noonan will remain on the Board as a Director for the present and be part of the oversight of the fund’s plans to consider a merger with Cbus. The two funds are expected to make a call by the end of 2020.

Ms Heaney is well known in printing industry circles and was a former President of the industry body, Printing Industry Association of Australia. She is Managing Director of Heaneys Performers in Print.

“I’m looking forward greatly to taking on the role and working with fellow directors to continue the evolution of the fund,” Ms Heaney said.