CEO INSIGHTS – Week Ending 7 March 2025

Tariffs & Trump

"Now when tariffs happen, we do a couple of things: first, we work with our suppliers to figure out ways to reduce cost, and they tend to respond to that; second, we have an ongoing productivity program…And frankly, if there's a tariff that's so big, like 2 or 3, well, we're the largest scissor maker globally. So, there's no one that can replace the volumes that we have." Walter Johnsen, CEO, Acme United Corp [major global manufacturer of cutting tools]

"That is not a permanent revolution. If you were going in and wanting to disrupt, you would do it at the front end. And then hopefully, and obviously the goal is to change the terms of trade, to reduce the Federal bureaucracy spend, et cetera, et cetera, which is why DOGE essentially has a limited time life. But we're in the midst of the early Trump 2 turmoil and then the optimistic interpretation is that it's purposeful turbulence." Robert Thomson, CEO, News Corp

Global Consumption

"So global oil consumption averaged 103.4 million barrels in Q4. That's a fairly good number, up 1 million barrels per day year-on-year. This is expected to reach 104.5 million barrels by year-end. In a normal market, this will be looked upon as a very kind of firm development within calendar year. Global supply was up 600 barrels per day." Lars Barstad, CEO, Frontline Plc [one of the world largest oil tanker shipping companies]

Emerging Asia

“There is a sizable opportunity for LNG suppliers to support this [energy] transition. For example, switching 20% of Asia's coal fired power stations to gas would require 310 billion cubic meters of gas per year, roughly three times the volume of Australia's annual LNG exports.” Meg O'Neill, CEO, Woodside Energy Ltd

New Zealand

“Whilst the domestic economy remains sluggish, we are seeing what we hope are the early signs of a recovery, particularly in bulk imports and most export categories.” Julia Hoare, Chair, Port of Tauranga Ltd

Insurance

"And in terms of purchasing the insurance, ladies and gentlemen, don't forget a product that is low involvement like auto insurance in the mind of many consumers, the power of the brand is the only thing they see for a purchasing decision. If you are a [sceptic] you'll say, "I don't care about anything else than full price." If you ever had a bad claims experience, you'll think again." Oliver Bate, CEO, Allianz SE

Repair Workshops

"We understand that most truck franchise workshops are busy, in some cases capacity constrained, and most of the growth in the underlying demand for truck service and repairs is being absorbed by private fleet workshops and a growing base of independent repairers." Market Statement, Supply Networks Ltd

Audiobooks

"Then audio books have come from almost out of nowhere to as a percent of digital now to be a larger share than e-books…And something fundamentally different has happened to reading, listening habits. And it's linked into the growth of the iPhone, people learning how to stream podcasts. And so I'm fairly confident that we're still at the front end of the audio book experience. And there's so much more that you can do with them, your ability, for example, to use AI to translate." Robert Thomson, CEO, News Corp

AI Efficiency

"We're definitely investing in AI to automate things inside the company. What that does is that it actually decreases costs. That's good. And it also allows us to go way faster, particularly in content creation. So the amount of content we're able to generate compared to 2 years ago is way more. I mean, it's like 10x or more than that." Luis von Ahn Arellano, CEO, Duolingo Inc [world’s most popular language learning app]

Beer

“Beer is a passion point for consumers and a vibrant category globally." Michel Doukeris, CEO, AB InBev

Investing

"Probably the most notable trend facing us, and it's one of the most significant trends in the investment ecosystem, is this move towards rules-based, systematic, customised strategies or personalisation at scale." Andrew Wiechmann, CFO, MSCI Inc.

Residential Apartments

“I am much more confident now because the purchasers are arriving in bigger numbers.” Harry Triguboff, CEO, Meriton

“The smaller units are difficult to sell because people buy larger, older apartments; we are not building smaller ones now. We used to build a lot of one bedrooms or one bedrooms plus multipurpose rooms, now we are not building them.” Harry Triguboff, CEO, Meriton

Competition

“Our common enemy is the internal combustion engine car. We need to work together [with Tesla]…to make the industry change.” Stella Li, Executive Vice President, BYD

Live Sport & Streaming Wars

“There’s more than one free to air player. There’s more than one subscription company. But now all of a sudden, those global streamers are coming in as a third predator, apex predator. In a good way because they want to have an opportunity to get this moment where everyone’s watching live whether it’s grand finals or State of Origins.” Andrew Abdo, CEO, National Rugby League

Consumer Spending

“July to December was better than I thought it would be, and all the publicity out there about cost-of-living pressures and I thought it would be pretty ordinary, but it was better than I thought, and January and February it has continued and was good as well.” Gerry Harvey, Chairman, Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd