ANZ's Richard Yetsenga on thinking globally and avoiding groupthink
The big four bank's chief economist wants Australia to look beyond the US and UK for ideas.
ANZ chief economist Richard Yetsenga was on a work trip when he noticed concerning messages from 9000 kilometres away. It was early 2020. The bank's Asia-based offices were warning their Australian colleagues a new coronavirus was spreading, it was serious and workplaces were shutting down.
But in Melbourne, where Yetsenga was visiting from his home in Sydney for a presentation, there was not yet the same sense of urgency.
“I was opining that the AFL season couldn’t possibly kick off, that there’s no way you were going to pack 100,000 people into a stadium [during an outbreak of a virus],” he says. “People just couldn’t even conceptualise such a thing ... But that's what Mainland China was telling us."
By March of that year, the men's games were postponed and the women's competition was cancelled altogether.
