Out of office
In a year of change, new leaders have emerged to guide the growth of Australia's new economy. Here's how Capital Brief reported on the transformation.
Trying to sum up 12 months of news can be a fool's errand, especially in a year as busy as this one. But if there was a defining theme for 2024 in Australian business, politics and the innovation economy, and Capital Brief’s coverage of these areas, it would be a changing of the guard, with new figures and firms rising to the top.
Perhaps the defining story of the year on the ASX was CBA's surging share price, which saw the bank surpass BHP to become the nation's most valuable company. “There aren’t Four Pillars in Australia's banking system,” Andrew Cornell wrote in August. “There’s one.”
CBA will end the year with a market value north of $250 billion, some $50 billion bigger than the big Australian miner and more than $100 billion bigger than each of its big four rivals. Whether CBA’s dominance (which is fuelled by its strategy and execution but also technical market dynamics) holds in 2025 remains to be seen, but the Matt Comyn-led lender will enter next year with at least one advantage over its rivals.
Back in March, Andrew broke the news that Westpac’s chair Steven Gregg had kicked off the search for a replacement for chief executive Peter King. The bank went on to appoint Anthony Miller to that role. NAB, meanwhile, hired Andrew Irvine to replace its CEO Ross McEwan, while Andrew’s old employer ANZ picked an outsider Nuno Matos to fill Shayne Elliott’s shoes. In other words, the only big bank with settled leadership heading into 2025 is CBA. Everything’s coming up Comyn.
