CEO INSIGHTS – Week Ending 20 March 2026

Job Recruitment

“It is now one of the recruiting tools in Silicon Valley. How many [AI] tokens come along with my job?” Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA Corp.

Fuel Supply

“A bit like the Covid toilet paper crisis, we’ve got the same thing happening here with fuel as a result of some commentators, who frankly should know better, creating the panic by saying the government hasn’t got this sorted out, it’s just ignorance.” Graeme Samuel, Chair, Airlines for Australia & New Zealand

“We hold fuel reserves at our delivery centres, which gives us some level of mitigation. We’re just watching it, literally hour to hour, day to day. We haven’t made any decisions because it’s just so fluid.” Garry Starr, Executive General Manager, Australia Post

Fuel Cost Pass Through

“But you can look at all the data, and you can certainly make a credible case that at least as the environment sits today that we recover 100% of that increase in fuel price.” Scott Kirby, CEO, United Airlines Holdings Inc.

“This is an industry that runs on pretty tight margins...in the order of 5¢ in the dollar net profit.” Gary Mahon, CEO, Queensland Trucking Association

Insurance & Reinsurance Rates

“The Swiss Re Institute estimates there's more than $7 trillion of annual insurance premiums globally with $4 trillion alone in non-life premiums, and these global non-life premiums are growing each year due to economic expansion, increasing insurance demand and new coverages purchased by those that already buy insurance as well as emerging risks and exposures.” Patrick Gallagher Jr, CEO, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

“The conflict in the Middle East could shift rates, but it's too early to tell the ultimate impact of these events. In the near term, it is unlikely the pricing trends will be impacted across the market as a whole.” Patrick Gallagher Jr, CEO, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Premium Purchases

“If you want to sell a super-premium product regardless of what it is, whether it's a hand tool or if it's an Hermes Birkin bag, you have to act like you're a super-premium company. That means even when times are tough, you can't rush [to cut investment]. I won't say not to be mindful of operating expense investment, but you can't throttle back that you destroy or attenuate the service level because if people are buying super premium priced products, whatever it is, they expect a level of attention after the sale. It's not a one-time episodic event.” Aldo Pagliari, CFO, Snap-On Inc [major tools company]

Photography

“And so, as this world continues to evolve and move forward, it reinforces something I've said for a long time, which is that people are still going to need high-quality pre-shot content.” Craig Peters, CEO, Getty Images Inc.

Metals Prices

“Despite ongoing elevated Chinese steel exports impacting scrap prices across export and ANZ domestic markets, the Metal business continues to be supported by strong non-ferrous [containing no/low iron] prices…The outlook for ferrous prices in ANZ remains subdued in the short term.” Market Statement, Sims Ltd

Research, Development & Innovation

“Incentives and funding are now simply spread too thinly across too many activities. Our RD&I [research, development & innovation] system is not just atomised. Funding is declining, and pressure is increasing. There are too many programs…Some programs involve multiple grant schemes, few of which fund the actual cost of the research. This maze has spawned its own industry of navigators because it is unnecessarily cumbersome. It is particularly onerous for small companies and startups with fewer discretionary resources.” Market Statement, Ambitious Australia [Strategic Examination of R&D Report]

Commercial Glass Markets

"However, the new year has shown some improvement. In NZ, we saw some improvements in February and are encouraged by indications in March. In Australia, an increase in activity is being seen in March.” Market Statement, Metro Performance Glass Ltd

Energy Costs & Manufacturing

“I’m not sure I can make a business case today for an energy-intensive facility located in Australia” Reg Weine, CEO, Bubs Australia Ltd

Export Competitiveness

“When I chat to the Canadians as one of my key export customers and ask them how far are we out, they essay about 15 per cent, and that’s our challenge. So, we need to be 15 per cent cheaper with our finished goods to be competitive with China.” Neil Brimacombe, CEO, SPC Global Ltd

Financial Markets & Algorithmic Traders

“Algorithmic trading is going from classical machine learning with human feature engineering called the quants, to now supercomputers studying massive amounts of data, discovering insight and discovering patterns by itself. And so this is going through its deep learning and its transformer moment.” Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA Corp.

“You could see that in the equity markets. You could actually see that more clearly, really, in how bond markets have behaved, with more pricing in of inflationary shocks…I think if the tensions were to persist and you move away from what is being priced, that is inflationary shocks, to something that really starts to weigh on growth, then I think that could really be a game changer in terms of how we would be advising clients, but also just the level of activity in the market.” Todd Tuckner, CFO, UBS Group AG

eSignatures

“eSignature remains a thriving part of our platform.” Allan Thygesen, CEO, DocuSign Inc.