The Tribune team has several decades of strategic communications and business advisory experience across all sectors of the economy, as well as vast involvement in regulatory affairs, government relations and shareholder activism.

Drawing on backgrounds in journalism, government, corporate affairs, investor relations, management consulting, corporate advisory, governance and risk management, we implement an integrated team approach to all client activities.

Our people have advised many Australian ASX listed and private companies, as well as multinationals, on a range of domestic and cross-border corporate, financial and reputational management issues.

These roles have included M&A, executive and Board renewal, corporate restructuring, and community engagement projects.

 

John Hurst

Founder

John advises clients on a range of strategic communications, media engagement and stakeholder engagement activities.

John is an experienced corporate affairs professional, with more than 15 years of corporate advisory, investor relations and financial and corporate communications experience working in professional services and in-house roles.  He also has an extensive network across the Australian and international media sectors, backed by 20 years’ experience at The Australian Financial Review, including five years as managing editor. 

He is a former managing director of Cannings Corporate Communications and a founder of Quay Advisers, which was acquired by global advisory firm, Teneo, in 2018.  

John’s deep background in corporate affairs and media has allowed him to advise senior management and boards on corporate transactions and strategy, reputational issues, media and investor relations, litigation, as well as executive and board room restructuring.

He has worked with many of Australia’s largest ASX listed companies and international corporations, as well as private entities and high net wealth individuals.

On reputational issues, John has advised companies and individuals addressing matters before ASIC, APRA, ICAC and parliamentary inquiries. 

Based in Sydney, John has also worked and lived in London and Hong Kong.

 
 

Mark Taylor

Founder

Mark has advised large and mid-cap corporations and government agencies on numerous multi-million dollar, multi-jurisdictional change, improvement and restructuring assignments, both nationally and internationally for more than 30 years.

Prior to Tribune, Mark co-founded SECORA which became a leading Australasian operational improvement and restructuring consultancy. He also helped establish Radmis which is now a growing productivity and cyber security advisory business.

Mark was previously a Partner with Ferrier Hodgson, a leading Australasian restructuring and insolvency advisory practice, and has served as a director and partner of professional services companies in Australia and Singapore, as well as private and investment companies.

Mark’s sector expertise includes aerospace, defence, government, professional services, health, financial services, automotive, mining and oil & gas. He has advised on numerous change, improvement and restructuring assignments and has a talent for building consensus across diverse groups of stakeholders.

 
 

Bo Briedis

Managing Director

Bo is an experienced finance and communications executive, who has advised clients across a range of areas including capital markets activity, issues management and corporate positioning from a both a financial execution and investor relations standpoint for almost two decades. 

Immediately prior to joining Tribune, she was a senior vice president at Teneo, a global CEO advisory firm.  Prior to that, she was a senior adviser in CBA’s Group Corporate Affairs team.  Bo has also worked at several strategic communications consultancies in Sydney and Melbourne, where she provided strategic counsel to ASX-listed clients across a variety of matters impacting corporate reputation and value.    

Before moving into financial communications, Bo worked in accounting and investment banking for over a decade.  While at Grant Samuel, Bo was primarily responsible for preparing independent expert’s reports for some of Australia’s largest, complex and high-profile transactions, as well as working across a variety of capital markets projects including M&A, takeover defences, demergers and dual track (trade sale and IPO) processes.  Bo began her career at Andersen, where she provided valuation, business modelling and assurance services.

Bo holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Communication from Bond University, a Diploma of Investor Relations from the Australasian Investor Relations Association and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia.

 
 

Ian Kortlang

Special Counsel

Kort has provided M&A advice, issues management and strategic counsel to many of the most high profile CEOs and Boards in Australia over three decades.

With a proven track record spanning new business creation, corporate strategy, national and international affairs, Kort has also held CEO roles at Burson-Marsteller, 360m and KORTLANG, which he co-founded.

Kort came to the private sector after a successful career as a political campaign strategist, public sector departmental head, diplomat and army officer. He was Chief of Staff to the Leader of the Opposition in both the State (NSW) and Federal spheres and served in the Australian diplomatic corps from 1973-80 in Asia, Africa and the OECD in Paris.

An Australian Army officer, he was mentioned in dispatches for distinguished service in Vietnam and later spent two years on secondment with the Joint Intelligence Organisation in Canberra.

Kort is an accomplished presenter and public speaker and a respected media and political commentator.

Kort served on Bond University Council from 2003 to 2009 and was the inaugural President of the Australia-Africa Business Council.

 
 

Murray Williams

Special Counsel

Since the late Nineties, Murray has specialised in planning and executing M&A and corporate play proxy fight tactics and strategies. This expertise, coupled with his lengthy background in business journalism, has afforded clients a unique approach for identifying and influencing proxy targets and to conducting proxy contests. 

Murray was founding managing director of Georgeson Shareholder Australia (later acquired by Computershare) and a founding director of Global Proxy Solicitation (later acquired by Morrow Sodali).  Some notable campaigns launched under his guidance include IEL’s bids for Carlton United Breweries and Woolworths, Xstrata’s merger with Glencore, ARA’s bid for Cromwell and many others in the food & beverage, mining, property and finance sectors.

Apart from his experience in proxy solicitation and shareholder opinion research, Murray also has 20 years’ experience as a media relations consultant to Australian and multinational companies and was a Co-Founder of strategic communications consultancy, Quay Advisers.

Murray is Chair of Alliance Advisors Australia.

 
 

Russell Baker

Strategic Adviser

Over many years, Russell has informed and influenced business and government decision making through careers as a senior adviser in Australian government trade and investment agencies; an international business journalist; a corporate communications consultant; and a business development adviser.

At Austrade, Russell helped attract billions of dollars of overseas investment into Australia’s clean energy sector. He also led projects and initiatives supporting Indigenous economic empowerment and business development.

Russell’s areas of expertise include Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) matters and impact investment. In 2020, he completed the Graduate Certificate in Social Impact, a postgraduate program run by UNSW Business School.

 
 

Louise Evans, OAM

Strategic Adviser

Louise has advised government and the private sector during an extensive career that includes 11 years at The Australian newspaper, where she was the managing editor and held a number of other senior roles including commercial editor, sports editor and national deputy chief of staff.

Louise was named a Top 100 Woman of Influence by The Australian Financial Review and has also worked around Australia and the world as a journalist, foreign correspondent, editor and executive for other media platforms including The Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC and AAP.

Louise is a published author and documentary maker who has also served as a director and communications manager for the peak national advocacy body Women Sport Australia, where she founded and launched the Women In Sport Photo Action Awards (WISPAA).  

In 2019, she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to the media.

As an experienced communications professional, Louise has worked at numerous major world sporting championships, six Olympic Games and six Commonwealth Games in a variety of communications and media roles. 

Earlier in her career Louise was the first female sports reporter hired by The Sydney Morning Herald, the first female sports editor employed by The Australian and in the 1990s worked for several years in both London and Beijing.

 
 

Cratis Hippocrates

Strategic Adviser

Cratis has been a senior digital business development executive for the past 20 years with a focus on media, higher education, marketing and communication sectors.

He has worked collaboratively with University of Sydney, University of Western Australia, Australian National University, Charles Sturt University, Flinders University and University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology.

He is highly skilled in advising and leading high performing teams in brand management, marketing, advertising, digital strategy and communications, working with CEOs across many geographies, including Vietnam, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and the United States.

Cratis has recently worked in international pathways education with Study Group and the SEEK-owned Online Education Services advising on partnerships and new business opportunities in Australia and in the ASEAN region.

He is a former chief marketing officer for RMIT University with global responsibility for the brand, driving domestic and international student and business growth. Prior to that, Cratis established the digital education brand Open Universities Australia (owned by RMIT University, the University of South Australia, and Monash, Griffith, Swinburne, Macquarie and Curtain universities) and built innovative channel relationships with SEEK, seeklearning, MyCareer, and Career FAQs to build significant digital business partnerships for universities in Australia and New Zealand worth over $200 million annually.

In the 1990s as a leading media academic in Australia and the United States, Cratis led research projects in public/civic journalism and was the head of learning and development at John Fairfax Publications (now part of Nine Network).

Cratis served on the board of St. John Ambulance (Victoria) from 2013 to 2017.

 
 

Paul Byers

Strategic Adviser

Paul is an experienced corporate advisor with expertise in operational improvement and restructuring particularly in the FMCG sector. Paul is committed to working with businesses and teams who want to achieve sustainable results, delivering positive outcomes for all stakeholders.

Paul has more than 25 years’ experience in managing organisations in the FMCG/food & beverage environment (Cadbury, Unilever, General Mills and Sara Lee), with a B2B focus over the past 15 years.

Paul has been involved in a number of site and business mergers and is an experienced change/project manager in both manufacturing operations and sales organisations. In his professional career Paul has been most successful in turnaround assignments where fast change has been required. Paul is a hands-on manager who is comfortable working alongside internal teams.

Paul's directorships include Sara Lee Australia as a managing director, CEO of Cavitus Australia, a start-up in the food sector operating internationally, Cavitus Malaysia and T&CO (Malaysia).

 
 

Shaun Palmer

Strategic Adviser

Shaun brings to Tribune extensive governance, consulting and international change management expertise across the resources, disability, allied health, manufacturing, technology start-up and engineering sectors. 

His areas of expertise include strategy, change management, executive remuneration and employee mobility.  

He has chaired an employee mobility advisory board and was a director of a human capital business focussing on post-acquisition integration.  

Shaun has been the senior human resources executive in large multinational resource, oilfield services and technology businesses including Xstrata, Vetco International and Schlumberger.  

Shaun currently chairs an advisory board for a national allied health business, chairs the risk committee for a not-for-profit supporting 500 participants in Sydney’s inner-west, coaches several CEOs and C-suite executives and consults to a variety of businesses.   

Shaun has graduate and postgraduate qualifications in psychology, economics and labour law.

 
 

Tony Young

Strategic Adviser

Tony is a former senior partner and Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of KPMG Australia.  He was responsible for Finance, Information Technology, Human Resources and Marketing.

Tony was also KPMG’s Client Lead Partner for a number of ASX listed companies including BHP Group, Qantas, Virgin Australia and Leighton Holdings.

His functional areas of expertise include performance improvement, cash flow and balance sheet management, financial reporting (including US SEC reporting), debt and equity raising and risk management. 

Tony’s sector expertise includes mining, oil & gas, transportation, construction & infrastructure and manufacturing.

He has also served as Chairman of an educational Not-For-Profit organisation.