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PwC Shares Its 28th Annual Global CEO Survey

30 January 2025

PwC’s CEO Survey shows Australian leaders are swiftly embracing disruptive forces for growth.

PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey data reveals some of Australia’s leading CEOs are moving forward and moving fast to capture the growth and value-creation potential of disruptive technological and environmental forces.

Yet many others are moving slowly, failing to recognise the scale of threats, challenges, and opportunities, constrained by leadership mindsets and organisational practices that lead to inertia. For those leaders there exists a stark choice: self-disrupt or be disrupted.

Meeting challenges, seizing opportunities

Converging megatrends are compelling CEOs around the world to reimagine their business models. Our survey spotlights two defining forces that are driving reinvention action: technological disruption and climate change. These super disruptions are forcing business leaders to profoundly reconsider long-held assumptions about how they operate. In response, some CEOs are successfully seizing opportunities from these trends, leveraging them to capture growth, create value, and leapfrog competitors.

There is evidence of rebounding optimism. Australia’s surveyed CEOs are more optimistic about economic growth than when we last surveyed them. Almost half (47%) expect an improvement in global gross domestic product (GDP) in the next 12 months. Around two-thirds expect an uptick (or stay the same) in Australia’s economic outlook in the year ahead.

Compared with their global peers, Australia’s CEOs feel confident about their organisation’s future. Almost three quarters (74%) believe their business will be economically viable for more than 10 years if they continue down their current path (versus 55% of global CEOs). Are local CEOs being overly confident?

Expectations for GenAI remain high; 42% of Australia’s CEOs reported increased efficiencies in their workers' time over the last year as a direct result of GenAI, and 40% expect their investments in the technology to increase profits in the year ahead. Yet trust remains a hurdle to adoption. Only a third of CEOs have a high degree of trust in AI.

Globally, investment in climate actions and sustainability is paying off. When we asked CEOs about the financial impact of climate-friendly investments, we found these moves were six times more likely to have increased revenue as to have decreased it over the past five years.

Australia’s business leaders brought a growing confidence to our latest CEO Survey, being more optimistic than they were this time last year. Almost half expect an improvement in global gross domestic product (GDP) in the next 12 months. They’re almost evenly split on the outlook for the local economy - one in three expects Australia’s GDP to improve or stay the same and 29% expect it will decline.

Elsewhere in the world, CEOs are even more upbeat. Nearly two thirds (58%) expect an upswing in global GDP. This gap, which puts global CEOs ahead in the optimism stakes, is unsurprising when you consider Australia is marginally out of sync with most major economies in terms of where we sit in the inflation cycle. Additionally, concerns about increasing regulatory burden and the lack of infrastructure may also be weighing on the minds of Australia’s CEOs.

Source: PwC