Within a year of graduating and marrying, Fred returned to his native Australia. There, he completed a PhD in Economics, realizing that his passion was in Finance.听 He joined a business faculty in Adelaide teaching MBA students as an instructor of Marketing, a position he held for 5 years.
After leaving that position, Fred became a venture capitalist. He directed five high-tech companies by screening, investing in, and monitoring their early-stage progress. One of them pioneered the use of an electronic tag system widely used on cars; another was a biotech company that pioneered the development of the transgenic pig, a goal he now thinks was not a good idea (that company failed).听
In the 1980s, Fred became the managing director of the New South Wales Investment Corporation, which was pioneering private-public partnerships to promote the economic development of NSW and operating as the State venture capitalist. In this capacity, he had $150 million equity at his disposal. The Corporation was a co-investor in twenty-eight businesses when a new, incoming government decided鈥擣red thinks, correctly鈥攖hat this was not an area for government, and the Corporation was slated for privatization. Fred led a management buyout of the conglomerate鈥檚 portfolio of businesses in which he faced fifty expressions of interest as the result of a public tender process. Consequently, his team was successful in the first management buyout of a statutory authority in the western world. After some years of paying back bankers, the private company became debt free and a stand-alone entity that survives to this day, as NSWIC Pty Ltd.
Fred credits this achievement with giving him the confidence to do other things, and to attempt to give back to the community. In the 1990s, he turned to writing novels.听 He wanted to show how much emotion, heartache, and loss occurs when a business fails. He was an expert in business failure; using a fictional format, his first novel attempted to educate the general public in a society that tended to denigrate business failure as somehow deserved. Bankrupts and Bandits was hailed as Australia's first corporate novel. Unexpectedly, it was also used as a text book supplement in accounting classes to add humanity to students' understanding of receiverships and liquidations. Fred was hooked鈥攈e loved writing, regardless of the pittance he received from sales.
His second novel, The Devil You Know, revealed crises in Australia鈥檚 rural areas, politics, and banking. This book was optioned three times for movies but none were produced. Simultaneously, Fred returned to teaching. This time, he taught International Business to MBA and DBA students throughout Asia and Switzerland.
Fred remarried, and he became a father once more, at age 56. Now, his ten-year-old daughter is the centre of his life. He praises having time to 鈥渇ather鈥� and has commented that men generally busy themselves and lose what, in the end, is the most important component to their lives: being there for their young children.听 Parenting (and his following achievements) remains what is most meaningful to him.
Fred volunteered for Australian aid abroad:听 He successfully turned around a motorcycle spare parts manufacturer in Bandung, Indonesia; the company, with 500 employees, was facing insolvency. He ventured into the heartland of the New Guinea highlands, tasked with writing a proposal for alleviating poverty in an area that encompassed about three thousand people, and which was only five decades away from the practice of cannibalism. His team managed to secure funding for a medical aid station, radio communication, and seed funding for microfinance activity. Fred feels he cannot adequately describe how profound that experience was. From it, he gleaned where true happiness and fulfilment originate鈥攖hey are attained when one couples the knowledge gained during a long career with being truly useful to others. And, he adds that not receiving payment added a deep sense of accomplishment: 鈥淪omehow, money corrupts, even when doing something of true value for desperate people.鈥�
Because he wanted more of this feeling, he became a volunteer fireman, although he says he was revealed as incompetent among people who could understand pipes and valves and hose pressure鈥攂ut they took pity on a self-proclaimed deadbeat who really couldn't attach a fire hose to a water source!听 This experience affirmed for him that the true underpinnings of society are held together by men and women who don鈥檛 have fancy foreign degrees, but who can be relied upon when the wild fires come.
Fred has also raced as a swimmer and served four years as the president of Masters Swimming South Australia. Clad in lycra, he still participates in bike racing, and recently became the treasurer of his cycling club. Fred says that he keeps fit for his young daughter.
The Analyst, Fred鈥檚 third novel, became a local best seller. It encapsulates business ethics in the format of banking foreclosures and was hailed as a "strangely moral tale, with themes so up-to-the minute that they could almost have come from another era." The book has been used for ethical investment conferences.
Set in Kenya, Fred鈥檚 current release鈥攁nd his proudest achievement in writing鈥攊s titled Musth. It explores the fate of the elephant, the displacement of the Maasai, and corruption in the government as well as in the machinations of Wall Street investment bankers. It is a thriller that attempts to speculate on what may happen, because the elephant and the Maasai are two sides of the same global coin. In this tale, Fred asks, 鈥淗ow does the world preserve while it expoits?鈥� To write this book, he travelled extensively in Africa and did research alongside a Maasai warrior who led him up creek beds in the Maasai Mara. Fred explains that "musth" is the condition in bull elephants which causes testosterone to spike, rendering them uncontrollably aggressive鈥攎uch like many men running around today causing domestic and boardroom havoc.
Another way Fred hopes he has made an impact was becoming a mediator through the family court. In this capacity, he sat with couples contemplating divorce in order to sort out how best they could avoid the legal system, preserve their friendship, and hopefully minimize the impact of divorce on their children. That experience lasted two years and he feels it was completely outside his comfort zone. His question remains: Did it have an impact? He hopes he has helped people avoid the disaster of the court system, although he feels that people mediate throughout their lives.
Fred defines impact as springing from a launching pad of influences and hurdles, from which comes the confidence to tackle wider concerns. He has maintained contact with many fellow students from his 捆绑SM社区 MBA program and he has great respect for their multitude of career accomplishments鈥攈e feels it is so important to maintain lifetime contact with the people with whom we have truly connected. He thinks that is the most important lesson to be drawn by all the young MBA students now entering the workforce believing they are the new Masters of the Universe. If he could, he would say to them, be humble鈥攐f all virtues that will assist you in navigating through a competitive world, never believe that an MBA is anything other than a hurdle which gives you confidence, never arrogance. Frederick Guilhaus knows that it gives one the confidence to ask the questions, not to provide the answers.
