CEO INSIGHTS – Week Ending 18 July 2025

Takeway Food

"If we look a little bit on the market outlook and the market data, it's still a continued weak market, persistent inflation and a challenging consumer climate...If we look a little bit at the market and the restaurants, consumers are trading down to cheaper places." Robert Dackeskog, CEO, Duni AB [major global takeaway food packaging provider / parent company of BioPak]

Industry Superfunds & Energy Transition

“For a fund, being overweight in renewable assets – which would be consistent with energy transition – is a potential source of tracking-error risk [to the benchmark and the performance test].” Mary Delahunty, CEO, Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia

Consumer Price Elasticity

“People confuse cost and value. That’s as true in fresh food as it is in live experiences...But there is going to be a tipping point." Brad Banducci, CEO, Ticketek Entertainment Group

Households

“In Australia, sales of maintenance products remained relatively constant.” Steven Brass, CEO, WD-40 Co Inc.

Venture Capital & IPOs

“I think we will start to see more [IPO] activity. If you are an Australian company with $100 million in revenue, good unit economics and profitable, the Australian market has always been a very attractive option.” Paul Bassat, CEO, Square Peg Capital

Corporate Spending

“If I break it down to the vertical level, financial services and technology are showing promise, while we see public services and telecom to be stable, while we see some stress in manufacturing driven by auto, life sciences, retail and CPG [consumer packaged goods] segments.” C. Vijayakumar, CEO, HCL Technologies Ltd [one of the world’s largest IT services companies]

Tariffs

“Generally speaking, I think CEOs learn how to navigate volatility and uncertainty in markets.” Mark Mason, CFO, Citigroup Inc

Advertising Spend

“I don't think the environment has changed all that much since the last time we spoke. I think the Trump administration hasn't issued final guidelines nor conclusions about some key markets that our clients operate in and so I think it's business as usual for the most part.” John Wren, CEO, Omnicom Group Inc [largest advertising company globally]

E-Commerce & Online Payments

"This year’s [Amazon] Prime Day event was bigger than any previous four-day period that included a Prime Day event." Market Statement, Amazon Inc

“We at Mastercard believe that we are witnessing a paradigm shift on how consumers will shop online over the next few quarters and years…where [AI] agents act on behalf of humans. Once consumers have found the product they want to purchase through the AI assistant, it's only natural that they want to stay in that environment to ask the assistant to complete that purchase…All this is really exciting. It's also a little scary, not just because of bad actors all around us and the potential for fraud scans and deep fakes, but also because there is now a new party, a machine involved in that transaction.” Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer, Mastercard Inc.

Jeans & Shorts

“While traditional fits like slim and straight-like styles remain a closet staple, loose and baggy continue to gain popularity for both women and men. Ahead of the [northern hemisphere] summer, we saw this trend accelerate in our short offering, which grew double digits in both men's and women's. With the '90s and Y2K fashion in full swing, longer and looser style shorts are in high demand.” Michelle Gass, CEO, Levi Strauss & Co. Inc

Iron Ore

“We are moving into a demand-constrained market, and we’re moving into a supply surplus.” Geraldine Slattery, President, BHP Australia

Taxation

"While we, and no doubt other large companies, would welcome a lower company tax rate, we believe there are other priorities which should lead the productivity reform agenda." Market Statement, Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd

“About half of all the economy isn’t captured by the GST when you add in education, government, financial services, healthcare, welfare, food.” Brian McNamee, Chair, CSL Ltd

Private Credit

“You may have seen peak private credit…you have to pay up a lot for it. I’m not saying it’s not going to grow some more. But I would have a slight reluctance, depending on who it was.” Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Mining Industry & Investment

“If I look at one of the competitive advantages that Australia has, it’s that we really understand mining. If you go to a fund manager in the United States, he or she is interested in the magnificent seven [a term that refers collectively to Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla]. For a US fund manager, mining is a rounding error…We’ve had some amazing success stories in the mining industry.” Jacob Klein, Chair, Evolution Mining Ltd

Industrial Property

“I think of leasing as having three components. One is renewal leasing, and that tends to be very, very strong in times of higher uncertainty, because the best, easiest decision to do is to make what you have and just kick the can down the road until you really have to make the decision. So that part of our business is much stronger than normal.” Hamid Moghadam, CEO, Prologis Inc. [world's largest owner, operator and developer of logistics real estate]