After a quadruple heart bypass in July, former News Limited spin doctor Greg Baxter retired from CBA in exactly the right way.
What are the live-in nannies slipping into the morning OJ of corporate Australia at the moment? Everyone’s sucking on epiphanies., the former spin doctor of SEC Newgate and consigliere at News Limited and James Hardie, who told his Commonwealth Bank colleagues on Thursday he’s seen the light.“After almost 45 years fighting fires – starting a few and getting caught in a few more – it’s time to retire, if not gracefully,” Baxter wrote.
Baxter’s “Adieu not Amen” email was as colourful as you’d expect for someone who has spent more than four decades protecting reputations and spinning yarns in media releases, with varying degrees of quality. But there’s a very strong take-home message: Retire and live, while you can! “My demise should be many years off given how well my recovery is tracking, but as people wiser than me have known for a long time, it’s never too early to start focussing on your health so you can live your very best life as you get older.
Baxter’s last assignment was the Great CBA Rehab project. Baxter and the CBA spinners dragged the country’s biggest bank away from perma-crisis after the royal commission, puffing upAustralia’s PR and crisis comms ranks are overrun with a bunch of LinkedIn-obsessed, high-minded flacks who drone on about “the mission”. Baxter was one of the last big, throwback characters of the old lunch-and-phone era.