Colin Morrison


Colin Morrison is an Australian publishing executive, who is the chairman, non-executive director and consultant to several media and digital companies in Europe and Asia. He is a Senior Advisor to the New York investment bank DeSilva+Phillips.
Morrison has managed media businesses in the UK, across Europe, the US, and Asia–Pacific. He has been involved in media partnerships and joint ventures with Sony, Microsoft, the BBC, Hearst, Axel Springer, Dennis, The Washington Post, Press Association, and Hachette.
He is currently chairman of SBTV News, a partnership between online platform SBTV and the Press Association. and also of Great Golf Media, a UK-based magazine and digital service. He has been appointed Chair of Boarding School Partnerships, a new information service being launched by the UK Department for Education under Lord Nash, the Under Secretary of State for Schools. In July 2018, he announced a Partnership Bursaries scheme under which 38 independent boarding schools would offer 40% bursaries to boarders in and on the edge of local authority care.
Morrison said he hoped the scheme would help many more vulnerable young people to attend boarding schools - like he had decades before.

Career

After starting his career as a journalist, he was deputy Chief Executive of Reed Business Information, a Director at EMAP Communications, CEO of Australian Consolidated Press, CEO of Axel Springer International, and Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director of Future plc.
From 2004 to March 2008, Morrison was Chief Executive of ACP-Natmag Magazines, a United Kingdom partnership between the National Magazine Company and the CVC-owned Australian Consolidated Press and was also CEO of ACP Media UK Ltd. Having established this weekly magazines group and been CEO since its formation four years before, Morrison left after selling ACP's 50% share to Hearst/NatMags.
He was Chairman of TV production company GRB Entertainment, Pharmaceutical Press, the British National Formulary, RCN Publishing, Globelynx , and Skips Educational.
He has held several non-executive director positions: Centaur Media, IPCN, eQuoteCentral, and Travel Weekly Group.

Professional & associations

He is a former chairman of Magazine Publishers of Australia, of British Business Press, and a director of the UK Professional Publishers Association. He is a Freeman of the City of London and is liveryman of the Stationers Company, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and Fellow of the Industry Parliament Trust. He is a member of the Cook Society, and the Groucho, Savile, RAC and 1920 clubs. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the UK New Year Honours List in 2018, "for charitable services to Vulnerable Young People."

Philanthropy

Morrison was the longest-serving Chairman in the 189-year history of the Royal National Children's Foundation, of which he was formerly a beneficiary. In this role, during 2001-1016, Morrison was campaigning for government to learn the lessons of the charity's work and what the UK's state and independent boarding schools can do to help transform the life prospects of vulnerable children.
From 2007 to 2011 he was a member of the UK government's Pathfinder group on vulnerable children and, in 2011, was responsible for launching the Assisted Boarding Network, supported by 60% of all local authorities in England and Wales and by the Department for Education

Blogging

Morrison writes the blog "Flashes & Flames" on "media fortune, fame and folly". and is a contributor to Huffington Post In 2016, he was honoured in the Folio:100 in the US. The citation read: "Colin Morrison uses his authoritative and entertaining voice to critique the media industry. He is an insightful and entertaining mind in a wobbly industry, and the Flashes & Flames blog serves as a forceful watchdog."