And now to a rather handsome financial product, providing safe harbour for hard-earned retirement savings:<\/p>\n
ROSS STEVENSON: Diversify your portfolio and invest with La Trobe Financial, looking out for Australians for over seven decades\u2026 Their 12 month term account has been recognised as \u201cBest Credit Fund – Mortgages\u201d 15 years in a row\u2026<\/p>\n
– Breakfast with Ross and Russel, 3AW, 4 November 2024<\/p>\n
La Trobe Financial\u2019s 12-month term account is such an attractive investment it\u2019s been a favourite of Nine Radio\u2019s 3AW, 2GB, 4BC and 6PR.<\/p>\n
Which have been bombarding its listeners with ads like these:<\/p>\n
AD:\u00a0Invest with La Trobe Financial, Australia\u2019s premier alternative asset manager.<\/p>\n
– Nights with John Stanley, 2GB, 8 September 2025<\/p>\n
La Trobe has splashed out too for the often pricier so-called live-reads, washing its ballyhoo through the voices of much-trusted radio hosts who, in the usual fashion, were reciting advertising copy like this:<\/p>\n
BEN FORDHAM: Now, we all want financial security and for over 70 years La Trobe Financial has been Australia\u2019s premier alternative asset manager. They\u2019ll look out for you so you can look out for those you love.\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Ben Fordham Live, 2GB, 9 October 2024<\/p>\n
La Trobe has so far persuaded more than 120,000 investors to trust it with their money, building up a tidy $20 billion dollars in assets under management.<\/p>\n
Along the way, La Trobe Financial and Nine Radio\u2019s sales teams have developed quite the commercial relationship.<\/p>\n
Our searches identified thousands of mentions of the alternative asset manager, in the past year alone, including the sponsorship of radio shows on Nine\u2019s stations in Sydney, Brisbane \u2026<\/p>\n
VOICEOVER:\u00a0\u2026 Afternoons on Brisbane\u2019s 4BC, brought to you by La Trobe Financial.\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Afternoons with Sofie Formica, 4BC, 17 September 2025<\/p>\n
\u2026 Melbourne and Perth:<\/p>\n
VOICEOVER: \u2026\u00a0Perth Today, brought to you by La Trobe Financial, live a more comfortable retirement with regular income.<\/p>\n
– Perth Today with Simon Beaumont, 6PR, 4 September 2025<\/p>\n
But 11 days ago, that more comfortable retirement hit a little speed bump in the form of the corporate cop:<\/p>\n
ASIC issues \u2026 stop orders against La Trobe Australian Credit Fund:<\/p>\n
ASIC is taking this action to protect consumers and retail investors from acquiring products that may not be suitable for their financial objectives, situation or needs.<\/p>\n
– Australian Securities and Investments Commission, media release, 18 September 2025<\/p>\n
Prompting La Trobe to lock its clients, spooked or otherwise, out of their online accounts, which the company denied was about stopping a run on its funds.<\/p>\n
A newsworthy sequence of events, you might think.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s very possible that Nine\u2019s loyal listeners weren\u2019t shocked at all.<\/p>\n
Why? Because their radio stations didn\u2019t tell them. Even as Nine\u2019s financial press put the story on both its front and back pages and warned:<\/p>\n
The longer the stop orders remain in place, the greater the damage to its reputation and the confidence of investors.<\/p>\n
– The Australian Financial Review, 24 September 2025<\/p>\n
The story was being covered by News Corp\u2019s capital city tabloids and by News Corp\u2019s flagship national masthead,\u00a0The Australian.<\/p>\n
While on Sky News, its business program was also all over the story like a rash:<\/p>\n
ROSS GREENWOOD:\u00a0The backlash over corporate cop ASIC\u2019s ban on new investment in La Trobe Financial\u2019s funds for 21 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Business Now, Sky News Australia, 23 September 2025<\/p>\n
But as far as we can see Nine Radio, having strafed its audiences for more than 12 months with thousands of ads and reads about the wonders of the company and its products, said not a word about the stop orders and not a word about La Trobe locking out its investors.<\/p>\n
Funnily enough, it only let its listeners into the joke six days later when, would you believe it, the stop orders were lifted:<\/p>\n
BROOKE CORTE:\u00a0\u2026 La Trobe Financial saw interim stop orders placed on its investment products, orders that were only actually just lifted this afternoon in fact.\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Money News, 2GB, 24 September 2025<\/p>\n
Missed the story by\u00a0that\u00a0much.<\/p>\n
The former chairman of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission told us:<\/p>\n
Any media enterprise with advertisers needs to be careful and responsible in reporting news, including adverse news on those advertisers, and not do\u00a0them favours\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Email from Allan Fels, former ACCC Chair, 26 September 2025<\/p>\n
And what did Nine Radio have to say about its little La Trobe omerta? A spokesperson told us:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nine\u2019s editorial decision-making is completely separate from any commercial relationships.<\/p>\n
– Email from Nine Radio Spokesperson, 29 September 2025<\/p>\n
And if anyone at Nine Radio needs a wee lesson in how to walk and chew gum, they could do a lot worse than watching Sky News\u2019 Ross Greenwood in full flight:<\/p>\n
ROSS GREENWOOD: One of the biggest finance stories in the past week is that the corporate regulator, ASIC, banned new investment into three of La Trobe Financial\u2019s funds for 21 days. Now upfront here, we note that La Trobe Financial is a sponsor here on Sky News and this program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Business Now, Sky News Australia, 25 September 2025<\/p>\n
There you go.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no secret that talkback radio is not the cash cow it once was.<\/p>\n
Nine Entertainment has also confirmed in just the past week that its contemplating the sale of these very radio stations.<\/p>\n
All of which means the pressure to sustain earnings, such as La Trobe\u2019s generous advertising spend, must surely be through the roof.<\/p>\n
But which also means the only asset of any real value at Nine Radio \u2013 the trust and loyalty of its listeners \u2013 should be deemed sacrosanct and elevated far above the increasingly desperate scramble for dollars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And now to a rather handsome financial product, providing safe harbour for hard-earned retirement savings: ROSS STEVENSON: Diversify…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-45067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}