It doesn’t take long to realise there are a few key constants in the life of super successful businessman Andrew Pridham: finance, family, footy and seeing the funny side. The 58-year-old businessman, who grew up in Adelaide, has risen to the top in both the corporate and sporting worlds, as one of the country’s most successful investment bankers and as chairman of the Sydney Swans.

This is a man who, by age 28, was managing director of multinational investment bank UBS Australasia, working out of Sydney, then in London and Singapore.

Andrew, the baby, with his four siblings. The family grew up in Mitcham and Andrew attended Rostrevor College.

By the time he was 34, Andrew was in a position to retire, turning his back on the high-pressure world of investment banking and instead volunteering in the tuckshop of his children’s local Catholic primary school in Sydney.

“But I worked out pretty quickly that cutting up chicken sandwiches was not going to keep me interested for very long,” says the savvy businessman, who went from the tuckshop to become executive chairman of investment banking at JP Morgan Australia.

Not taking himself – or life – too seriously comes naturally to this former Rostrevor College student, who grew up in Mitcham as the youngest of five siblings.

His book, What Matters, released in 2021 and developed into a podcast, gives insights into Andrew’s views on leadership, business, investing and life. Its inscription reads: “Take what you do very seriously, but yourself far less so”.

The trappings of Andrew’s success have been publicly reported over the years, including that he sold his Sydney Harbour-side home last year for $40 million (in which he continues to live with his wife Carolyn and their daughter Grace, 14, pending completion of construction of their new Harbour-side mansion).

The investment banker also famously bought a Brett Whiteley painting in 2007 for $2.5 million, which turned out to be a fake. After a criminal court case targeting those charged by police after a long investigation, Andrew donated the painting to the University of Melbourne in the name of research on fake paintings.

By any measure Andrew Pridham is a man who’s made it, but he downplays his astounding financial success when chatting to SALIFE.

Andrew at a Swans match with the club’s CEO and former St Peter’s College student Tom Harley, and Australia’s Governor-General Sam Mostyn, front.

“It’s like anything, you just sort of get up, you’re getting on with it, step by step, one day after another,” he says. “If parents come looking for career advice for their children, or Swans players seek life advice, my first question is, ‘What do you want to achieve?’, and if they say it’s to make money, I’ll say, ‘Well, you want to think twice about going into media or those sorts of jobs that may not pay you much’.

“If you want to make money, you’ve got to be where the money is.

“I’m always someone who focuses on what could go wrong, must be the Irish Catholic in me. So, I’m pretty conservative. I just worked hard and the rewards came over time. It wasn’t easy, though, it was very stressful. With investment banking people think, ‘Oh, you just get paid a lot of money’. But it’s very stressful and in my case, I was running UBS’s investment banking business when I was 28, that was very stressful.

“You know, it’s dealing in billions of dollars, and things are serious. So, when things go wrong, it’s serious, and when things go right, it’s great, but it’s a lot of pressure.”

Today, Andrew is the co-founder and vice chairman of financial services firm MA Financial Group, a company he set up in 2009 with US investment banker Ken Moelis, putting in
$5 million apiece.

You might like

People & Places

5 places to stay

People & Places

Restaurant Review: Etica

The company, now valued at more than $1.5 billion, started out with offices in Sydney and a staff of five. Sixteen years later, it has offices in New York, Singapore, China, Manila, New Zealand and Japan, a staff of 800 and over $10 billion in assets under management. The company’s mortgage arm, Finsure, processes more than eight per cent of residential mortgages written in Australia annually, with $140 billion dollars in managed loans. Its other interests include marinas, (it is the largest marina operator in Australia), hospitality and private credit.

“Everything in my life has exceeded my expectations,” Andrew says. “I’ve been very lucky and I’m pretty good at picking good people.

“I’m not as hands-on these days and not physically in the office every day … (but) I’m always available. I’m just one of those people that, if you spoke to my wife, Carolyn, she’ll tell you, I don’t switch off. If I do something, I like to be very engaged. I’m very engaged with the Swans, I’m very engaged with my work.”

Andrew’s father Bob, whom he describes as a “very smart and funny man”, was a role model and mentor for his youngest son. Bob was general manager of pharmaceutical company FH Faulding, while Andrew’s mother Marie was a hairdresser by trade, but a stay-at-home mum by the time he was born. Growing up in a loving, Catholic household with older siblings Helen, David, Mary and Richard, no doubt helped shape Andrew’s strong work ethic, as well as his ability to laugh at life and himself.

Weekends back then were all about footy – when he wasn’t lacing up the boots to play for Rostrevor, Andrew could be found at Norwood Oval watching his beloved Redlegs. Sundays were spent watching the telecast of his other favourite team, the Sydney Swans.

Andrew has long been a Swans supporter and is passionate about the club’s culture and success.

“I just barracked for the Swans as a kid because they were the only non-Victorian team, and as you know, for South Australians, you’re not particularly brought up to be that fond of Victoria! Although in later years I grew to love Victoria,” Andrew says.

“I was always a footy fanatic. I had one of my heroes, (former Norwood captain) Michael Aish over at my house for dinner last Friday night. I’m still very into the Redlegs.”

You might like

People & Places

5 places to stay

People & Places

Restaurant Review: Etica

Andrew admits he had no specific career ambitions during his teenage years, but toyed with the idea of journalism, influenced by his brother-in-law, media identity Matthew Abraham, who is married to his eldest sister, Helen.

He also contemplated studying law, but settled on real estate after reading the BRW Rich List.

“I got accepted into the journalism course at Magill,” he says. “I also went along to the presentation day for law, but I didn’t like the sound of it, for a whole lot of reasons, so I decided I’d do real estate because our family had owned some apartments in and around Mitcham, and I used to do everything from mowing the lawns through to leasing them.

“I didn’t really know much, but I read the BRW rich list and I saw that probably half the people on it were in real estate. So, I thought, that seems pretty good, so I did that.”

Andrew completed a bachelor of applied science and property resource management at the University of South Australia, studying part-time in his final year so he could take up his first job at real estate agency Jones Lang Wootton.

The opening of Pridham Hall at UniSA in 2018 with, from left, son Oliver, daughter Amelia, mother Marie, Andrew, wife Carolyn, daughter Grace, father Bob, brother David, brother-in-law Matthew Abraham, sisters Helen and Mary and brother Richard.

At age 22 and with his degree in his back pocket and a dream to emulate the success of the rich-listers, Andrew headed for the bright lights of Sydney. He slept on the floor of a mate’s flat, applied for three jobs and was offered them all, deciding on a development company that developed suburban offices and managed a property trust.

“I’ve always been happy to work hard, I’m not a big party animal,” he says. “Back then I would go to the pub on a Thursday night after work, play tennis once a week and I played footy for St Ives and the University of NSW, but I didn’t take it that seriously, because I was working. Then I blew my ankle up in a game, an injury that stopped me playing altogether.”

Andrew spent the next decade making his mark in Sydney’s thriving financial circles, ending up at a company called Wardley, which was owned by Hong Kong Bank and whose clients included tycoons such as Alan Bond, Christopher Skase and John Elliot.

“They were a big real estate financier, into entrepreneurs and funding all sorts of things,” Andrew says. “Big M&A (mergers and acquisitions) deals. I worked in their real estate business which I really enjoyed.”

But when the recession hit in the late 1980s Andrew followed his boss to a company called Dominguez Barry Samuel Montagu, an investment bank which ultimately became the Swiss Bank and then UBS.

“I went there in the depths of the recession, and I was in a real estate division at DBSM and the recession was brutal for banking and then the real estate industry,” he says. “A lot of real estate was in those days owned in unlisted property trusts and because of the recession, interest rates going to 21 per cent, they were all in huge trouble, and the whole industry had to be restructured.

“I guess that was my luckiest break, apart from meeting some very good people, because I had a few ideas how to deal with it, and I convinced some clients what the right path was, which was to list them.

Andrew brings his business acumen, love of footy and sense of humour to his role as Swans’ chairman.

“I guess that was the time my career started to take off, because there weren’t many investment bankers specialising in real estate and that was my training. I got some deals done in terms of restructuring some unlisted property trusts, and then the client list sort of just began to grow. And in the end, I was the primary banker to Westfield, Lend Lease, General Property Trust, National Mutual, AMP, and it grew from there – all through the ‘90s.”

The financial whiz bought his first home on Sydney’s North Shore in 1992 for $225,000, where he lived with then-wife Jenny and their children Amelia, now 30, and Oliver, 28.

“I always had a good idea how to make money, I’ve always been very enterprising and I was ambitious, but I never had a grand plan,” he says.

Andrew loved Sydney life and had no aspirations to work overseas, but was offered a great career opportunity by UBS to move with his family to London in 1999 to become the bank’s global head of real estate. He lasted two years, missing the Australian weather, the lifestyle and the footy. By then he’d begun some involvement with the Sydney Swans, becoming friends with iconic players such as Paul Kelly, Tony Lockett and Andrew Dunkley.

As a compromise with UBS, who didn’t want Andrew to return to Australia, he struck a deal to move to Singapore.

“One of the reasons I chose Singapore was because they had a thing called Australia TV, where you could watch the AFL live,” he says. “So, we got the big screen TV, hooked it up, and this is a 100 per cent true story, the first time I turned it on, there was a blank screen except for a sign that said, ‘Australia TV has closed’. So that was that, I went back to not knowing what was happening in the footy.”

It was 2002 when Andrew and the family moved back to Sydney, and the then-34-year-old opted for retirement and tuckshop duty.

“I was burnt out from working so hard for as long as I had,” he says. “I was only 34 but I genuinely thought, ‘I’ll come back and I’ll retire’. That was my plan.

“It was very stressful dealing with very high stakes and big dollars and people’s lives in a way. It’s not fun having a knot in your stomach 24 hours a day, every day of the week. I certainly don’t have that now.

“I remember my father said to me, ‘you’ve got to enjoy your life’. I took that seriously.”

Andrew was proud to be made an Officer of the Order of Australia, AO, after years of service to the finance and sporting sectors.

But the retirement plans didn’t last long. Soon, ex-clients were getting in touch and before he knew it, Andrew was back in business, setting up a boutique investment banking business called First Provident.

“I really didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to work that hard and have that responsibility,” he says. “It was good to make a lot of money, and then, I sort of had to make a decision. I had a few banks calling me, offering me jobs, and then JP Morgan called.

“I told them, ‘Look, I’m not interested in a job, but what about if you bought my business?’ And so they bought the business, and I ran JP Morgan’s investment banking business for five years, becoming executive chairman in 2004.”

Andrew left JP Morgan in 2009, going into business with Moelis in the business that became MA Financial.

The move back to Australia in 2002 coincided with an offer to join the Swans board and the footy fanatic was there when the club raised the premiership cup in 2005 and again in 2012. He became chairman in 2014.

The high-profile businessman will head back to Adelaide this month for the annual Gather Round, hosting a corporate breakfast for Swans sponsors and other AFL networks. While there have been whispers in the footy world about other states stealing the popular event, Andrew says Gather Round is precisely where it belongs … in SA.

“I’m very supportive of it staying in South Australia and continuing to be a signature event on the calendar, locked in forever in South Australia, provided it keeps making sense financially,” he says.

“Firstly, I think it’s just a fantastic festival of football and a great coming together. It’s like an industry convention, where we all converge, where you can walk down the street and you see people you wouldn’t otherwise see, sitting in cafes having a glass of wine or breakfast. So, it really brings the footy world together.

“It’s a huge success for South Australia and it’s delivered a lot of infrastructure for football, particularly the money being spent, whether it’s at McLaren Vale, Norwood Oval, Barossa, even the Adelaide Oval. I just think it brings a real focus on South Australian football.”

Andrew adds that “you’d be amazed” at how many of his national and international business connections have never been to Adelaide, and how he enjoys showing off his hometown.

“We take a lot of our sponsors for Gather Round and the most common response I get from people is, ‘what a fantastic place’,” he says. “And I sort of go, ‘well, yeah, no kidding’, but they just haven’t been there.

“I think a lot of people outside of South Australia, their perception is that it’s a sleepy country town and then they get there and realise there’s great restaurants, wineries, beaches, and it’s buzzing.

“There’s also a lot of industry and business there, there’s no stamp duty on commercial property. There are a lot of reasons to invest in South Australia. So, I’m a huge fan, a huge supporter of Gather Round, and most importantly, there are AFL games at the mighty Norwood Oval.”

The Swans chairman is pictured with ex-coach John Longmire and new coach Dean Cox in November last year. Photograph Phil Hillyard.

Giving back where possible is a guiding principle for this multimillionaire who, in 2016, donated $5 million to the University of South Australia through his Pridham Foundation. The money was used to build a sports and graduation hall, named Pridham Hall in his honour. It was the largest single donation in the university’s history.

“I think if you can give back, you should, and I genuinely get more enjoyment out of giving than receiving,” says Andrew, who in 2019 was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for “distinguished service to the investment banking and asset management sector, to sporting groups, and to philanthropy”.

“Building proper relationships and connections with people and institutions that you can support financially has been very rewarding. I had a bit of involvement with the merger with the University of Adelaide, so that’s given me a lot of pleasure. Apart from coming from Adelaide, most of my family live there, I’ve got a lot of business interests in the state as well and I love to give back.”

The philanthropist also funded another Pridham Hall, a community sports centre in Sydney, next door to the Swans impressive new state-of-the art club rooms and facilities, and he is a big supporter of the GO Foundation set up by ex-Adelaideans and former Swans stars Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin to support Indigenous students.

It’s through his role at the Swans that Andrew still gets to enjoy a bit of old-fashioned private school rivalry, thanks to current Swans CEO Tom Harley, and former AFL boss Gillon McLachlan, both ex-St Peter’s College students.

Swans champion Adam Goodes with Andrew. Goodes founded the GO Foundation to support Indigenous students, a cause that Andrew loves to support.

“We understand that in Adelaide, the first question you ask anyone is what school they went to, and all those important things which they don’t understand in Melbourne or Sydney,” Andrew says. “When Gillon was AFL CEO, and our Swans CEO is Tom, both are ex-Saints boys who I feel basically reported to me, I would always joke that that’s how the world should be – Rostrevor boys running St Peter’s boys!”

Andrew’s other joys in life include his role as a first-time grandfather after daughter Amelia and her husband Aiden welcomed baby Beau in February.

“I’ve already signed him up to the Swans,” he says. Watching daughter Grace play footy through the Swans Academy is another highlight for this accomplished South Australian, who takes a moment to reflect when asked what is still left to achieve in life.

“I don’t know. I don’t think that far in advance,” he says. “Really, I’m happy just having a healthy and happy family and not taking life too seriously. Becoming a better person every year, that’s my objective. And another Swans premiership would be nice.”

This article first appeared in the April 2025 issue of SALIFE magazine.