The Fellowship
In honour of Mr Colin Brain, Ferriscorp Group has established an endowment for the QUT Faculty of Business - The Colin Brain Governance Fellowship. The purpose of this gift is to encourage research and education in the areas of corporate governance, business ethics and the integrity of the financial management of an organisation.
The Fellowship will be awarded annually for the study of, or research into, corporate governance and/or business ethics including the financial management of organisations to any of:
- a PhD student
- a member of QUT staff awarded time off normal duties in which to study
- an overseas visiting scholar
- an executive-in-residence
- any other aspirant deemed suitable by the Panel.
Colin Brain Fellows will be asked to present the results of their work through a series of public lectures.
There will also be a Colin Brain Prize awarded each year for outstanding performance in the study of corporate governance, business ethics or the ethical or governance aspects of financial management of an organisation by a student on QUT’s MBA program.
Colin Brain
Colin Brain, FCA, ACIS was Chief Financial Officer of a group of electrical engineering companies and Company Secretary of a listed company in Sydney. For 11 years he worked as an accountant with Price Waterhouse and was involved with the auditing of a large number of small to medium enterprises and many of Australia’s best known blue-chip companies.
It was during this period that Colin first became aware of the shortfalls in the standards that some of these organisations were applying in relation to their fiduciary responsibilities.
In 1972 he joined what was to become the Ferriscorp Group of Companies based in Brisbane and materially assisted in the Australian and international growth that followed. During the 35 years that he spent with Ferriscorp, Colin demonstrated that building and managing a successful international business can co-exist very effectively with ethics and good corporate governance, even in a highly entrepreneurial and competitive environment.
Alarmed by the business excesses of the late 1980s and a plethora of corporate crashes (Bond Group; Enron; One-Tel; HIH for example), he was delighted that, on his retirement in April 2007, The Ferriscorp Group offered to make a donation to establish an endowment in his honour at QUT for the purposes of fiduciary business education.
Colin was convinced that if the various management personnel of these organisations had learnt good financial management skills and applied the principles of good business-ethics, then good governance would have naturally followed.
It was Colin’s fervent wish on retirement to see solid education in good Corporate Governance, Financial Management and Business Ethics taught to our future business leaders through the Faculty of Business at QUT.
The Inaugural Colin Brain Governance Lecture
The Inaugural Colin Brain Governance Lecture was held on Thursday 4 September 2008 to officially launch the fellowship. 
The Honourable Nick Greiner, leading company director and former Premier of NSW presented on Corporate Standards in Australia: Best Practice? Approximately 200 invited guests attended the lecture where Mr Greiner shared his experiences on corporate goverance in Australia and views on 'best practice'.
Further Information
Julie-Anne Sully
Events & Engagement
Faculty of Business
ja.sully@qut.edu.au
07 3138 8380