Career
After graduating from Oxford, Turnbull returned to Australia and began working as a barrister. He left the bar in 1983 to become General Counsel and Secretary for Australian Consolidated Press Holdings Group, from 1983 to 1985. During this time he defended Packer against the "Goanna" allegations made by the Costigan Commission.
In partnership with Bruce McWilliam he established his own law firm, Turnbull McWilliam, in 1986. In that year Turnbull defended Peter Wright, a former MI5 agent, who authored the book Spycatcher, who successfully blocked the British Government's attempts to suppress the book's publication, and Turnbull later wrote a book on the trial. In 1987, he established an investment banking firm, Whitlam Turnbull & Co Ltd, in partnership with Neville Wran (former Labor Premier of New South Wales) and the former State Bank of New South Wales chief executive, Nicholas Whitlam (son of Gough Whitlam, former Labor Prime Minister of Australia). Whitlam parted company with the others in 1990, and, from then until 1997, when Turnbull moved to become a managing director and later a partner of Goldman Sachs, the firm operated as Turnbull & Partners Ltd.
Turnbull was also chair of a large Australia Internet Service Provider, OzEmail (1994–99), a director of FTR Holdings Ltd (1995–2004), chair and managing director of Goldman Sachs Australia (1997–2001) and a partner with Goldman Sachs and Co (1998–2001). In the 1990s, Turnbull was chairman of Axiom Forest Resources, which conducted logging in the Solomon Islands under the trading name Silvania Forest Products. The latter's work was described by the Australian International Development Aid Bureau as a "clear-felling operation", and the then Solomon Islands Prime Minister Solomon Mamaloni reportedly threatened to close it down for "constant breaches of logging practices", according to a critical article in the Solomon Times.
In 1999, Turnbull sold OzEmail to the then-telecommunications giant MCI Worldcom. Turnbull's stake was reportedly worth nearly A$60 million. In the same year he used his software and investment company FTR Holdings Ltd to take positions in a number of Internet businesses including Webcentral and Chaos.com.
In May 2002, Turnbull appeared before the HIH Insurance royal commission and was questioned on Goldman Sachs' involvement on the possible privatisation of one of the acquisitions of the collapsed insurance company. The Royal Commissioner's Report made no adverse findings against him or Goldman Sachs.
Read more about this topic: Malcolm Turnbull
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