He had ties to stockbroker Jonathan Binns Were on both sides of his family – Were was his mother's maternal grandfather and his father's step-grandfather.
They ran the Ricketson Bros. general store and Staniforth edited The King Islander, a local newspaper.
He took part in the landing at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915 and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for his leadership that day, after all the officers and NCOs in his company became casualties.
Ricketson received a glancing bullet wound in June 1915 and a shell blast in August left him partially deaf.
He arrived back in England in September and was promoted captain in January 1917, subsequently serving on the Western Front.
He began a weekly sharemarket letter, expanded the brokerage interstate and opened a London office, and was a strong proponent of business ethics, opposing insider trading through a "rigid, underlined and emphasised insistence that share brokers could not be share traders".
In late 1930, he and his friend Robert Menzies assisted the loan conversion campaign that acting treasurer Joseph Lyons had initiated to allow Australia to meet its obligations to international financiers.
[2] After Lyons led the UAP to victory at the 1931 election, the Group's influence declined and Ricketson was one of the only members to remain close with the new prime minister.
According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, "the establishment of the Reserve Bank of Australia in 1959 has been attributed in part to his influence and persistence".