Corporate cost cutting remains a focus as broad based growth remains elusive
Corporate cost cutting remains a focus as broad based growth remains elusive. Some interesting comments coming out of the Commonwealth Bank's annual Australasian Conference regarding the sluggish transition away from mining in the economy. Aside from the housing sector and increased export volumes of commodities (i.e. iron ore) there are limited drivers of growth in the economy. This quote from CBA's director of equity strategy Tim Rocks says a lot about the mind set of many businesses: If you sit through a company presentation, or a company strategy day, these days, it's all about cost-cutting and not about how you capture the growth outlook. So, we actually tallied up and found that about half the listed companies that we cover are in the middle of aggressive cost-cutting campaigns...Corporate -Australia is not going to lead this recovery; they may respond to it when they see it, but their mindset is not one where they are actually even just looking for those opportunities. Further coverage is in the AFR (paywall): (VIEW LINK)
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