Qantas CEO Alan Joyce dominated business headlines in 2020
For better or worse, the media spotlight shone brightly on many business leaders in 2020, but there was one CEO that outshone them all – by a mile.
He didn’t top the list of our highest paid executives again this year – far from it – but for sheer news value Qantas chief Alan Joyce left his competitors in the dust in 2020.
Data crunched by real-time print, online, TV, radio and social media monitoring company Streem shows that the national carrier’s long-serving chief executive, who early in the year, along with his senior executive team, slashed his pay to zero as COVID-19 hit hard, was our most talked-about business leader this year.
Taking radical action like standing down 20,000 workers, grounding virtually every plane in the Qantas fleet, and cutting his own pay to nothing – at least for part of the year – helped keep Mr Joyce in the news
The impact that every new COVID-19 flare-up has on travel and tourism also made for a busy year for the Qantas media team, with the company itself topping Streem’s list of most talked-about firms, with events like the Wuhan evacuation, border closures and rival Virgin’s collapse keeping it in the spotlight.
James Packer was out of the blocks early in 2020 in terms of media chatter, with hopes Crown Resorts’ Barangaroo development in Sydney would be fully up and running by the end of 2020 still on the cards back then, as the NSW gaming regulator’s commission of inquiry started to spin up to full speed.
Mr Packer’s testimony at the inquiry, delivered from his then Tahiti-based superyacht IJE, then kept the largest single shareholder of Crown shares in the media spotlight, often uncomfortably.
Former Virgin Australia boss Paul Scurrah rounded out the podium for most-talked about business bosses, with the airline’s fall to, at one stage, just one flight per day, and then into administration and eventually out again, with him no longer at the helm, generating plenty of column inches.
Streem media and partnerships lead Conal Hanna said it was no surprise that the biggest news story of the year, in the global pandemic, underpinned what was reported on and read.
“Coronavirus has been the biggest news story in living memory, appearing in more than 80 per cent of media items at its March peak. By comparison, the bushfires peaked at 27 per cent of stories in January,” Mr Hanna said.
“So it’s no surprise that the companies at the forefront of COVID-19 coverage have generated the biggest media profiles this year. Think aviation, supermarkets and financial institutions – all industries with direct customer relationships that were deeply impacted by the virus.”
Tech superstar Mike Cannon-Brookes dropped out of the top 10 after a strong early showing, with miners, bankers and grocers rounding out the list.
Jean-Sebastien Jacques, the former Rio Tinto boss who was at the helm as Rio destroyed the enormously significant Juukan Gorge caves in WA’s Pilbara region, was the highest profile mining executive, just pipping multi-billionaire, energetic philanthropist and now R.M. Williams owner Andrew Forrest.
On the company front, the nation’s COVID toilet paper obsession likely helped keep Woolworths and Coles in the top three companies behind Qantas.
Buying limits and angst about whether supermarket shelves would be stocked meant the big two retailers were never far from the news.
The big four banks, which juggled – adeptly it seems – the needs of customers to freeze mortgage and loan payments, along with historically low interest rates and investors’ desires for dividends also kept their share of attention.
BHP, the Big Australian, came in at Number 10, and with a year unscathed by drama, we can only assume the surging iron ore price, and the company’s general newsworthiness kept it in the mix.
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