It’s time to stop gouging the dead

by Richard Denniss in The Australian Financial Review

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Originally published in The Australian Financial Review on March 5, 2013

Over the past century thousands of generous Australians have died and left some or all of their estate in a “perpetual trust” to be used for philanthropic goals. But most of the “perpetual trustees” have not been as long-lived as the funds they were managing and many funds were bought up by larger financial institutions over time. So it came to pass that some of the largest and most profitable financial institutions in the country are now the custodians of hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropic funds.

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