- Pick & Scroll News by The Aussie Corporate
- Posts
- 🗞️ Lower-value human capital
🗞️ Lower-value human capital
Word of advice for any bosses out there planning layoffs - choose your vocabulary carefully.
Pick & Scroll News
May 25, 2026
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here
Good morning. Word of advice for any bosses out there planning layoffs - choose your vocabulary carefully.
When Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters estimated that 7,800 staff would be made redundant, he insisted it wasn't about cost-cutting. Instead, he called it "replacing lower-value human capital."
As one employee rightly fired back: "You will forever be known as the guy who believes his employees are 'lower value'."
All the headlines and more below...
GYG CLOSED ALL 8 US STORES AFTER ITS FOUNDER ADMITTED "IT WASN'T WORKING”
Guzman y Gomez shut its entire US operation on Friday after founder Steven Marks spent 3 months in Chicago and realised it would take "significantly more time and capital than we had expected." The company told the ASX that financial performance "has not been acceptable and is not meeting targeted hurdles."
GYG's share price fell 67% from its January peak to $15 last month.
6 months ago, the company told news.com.au it had seen "significant improvement in sales momentum" in Chicago. Marks has now admitted he "made a lot of mistakes" and that revenue wasn't growing fast enough to justify the capital. The share price jumped 10% to $20 on the news - still down more than half from the $46 all-time high.
Australian sales grew 17% in the second half of 2025. The company still plans to open 32 local restaurants this financial year and says it's on track for 1,000 Australian stores long-term. Singapore and Japan are both expanding.
AUSTRALIAN NEWS
Sydney and Melbourne property prices are forecast to fall up to 9% by end-2026 as weak auction clearance rates below 60% and rising mortgage stress signal the biggest housing correction in 40 years. LINK
ANDHealth reported that 86% of Australian digital and connected health SMEs now cite access to capital as a top 5 challenge, with 46% raising funds just to survive and 21% cutting staff. LINK
COMPANY NEWS
Qantas has cut one-way economy fares on key regional routes to as low as $99 as it records its best domestic on-time performance in 9 years and adds new A321XLR aircraft. LINK
CSL lost nearly $10B in market value after revealing US$5B in kidney treatment business Vifor impairments and multiple profit downgrades, as rising competition and costs erode investor confidence. LINK
Guzman y Gomez has scrapped its loss-making US expansion by closing 8 Chicago restaurants as it refocuses on a booming Australian business with 237 outlets and 17% sales growth. LINK
Singtel has confirmed it will sell a minority stake in Optus as it seeks an Australian partner to help rebuild the troubled carrier after recent reputational crises. LINK
Meta has made a long-serving AI expert redundant after nearly 7 years as part of a broader reorganisation of 8,000 job cuts, in a pivot to AI. LINK
Former employee Michael Kha has sued Novo Nordisk in the Federal Court of Australia, alleging retaliatory dismissal after he raised concerns Ozempic sales bonuses encouraged off-label weight loss use. LINK
The April Australian Podcast Ranker shows Sky News Update achieved its highest position at 3rd with 514,202 monthly listeners, ahead of ABC News’ Top Stories. LINK
One brand built 30+ landing pages through Viktor without a single developer.
Each page mapped to a specific ad group. All deployed within hours. Viktor wrote the code and shipped every one from a Slack message.
That same team has Viktor monitoring ad accounts across the portfolio and posting performance briefs before the day starts. One colleague. Always on. Across every account.
5,700+ teams. 3,000+ integrations.
CHART OF THE DAY
Global EV sales hit 21.2 million units in 2025 - more than doubling since 2022 - with market share jumping from just 2% in 2018 to 25%, meaning 1 in 4 new cars sold worldwide is now electric. China is the overwhelming force behind this, accounting for ~13.3M of those sales (~60% of the global total), while Europe and the US make up most of the remaining ~7.9M.
ONE MORE SCROLL
Editor’s Pick: Lost for 150,000 years: Rainforest discovery upends human history.
Draft Pick: Football Australia faces record losses and plans a 20% staff cuts.
Doctor’s Pick: Scientists discover why Alzheimer’s risk hits women so much harder.
BRAINTEASER
My city has 500 buses, each labelled with a unique number from 1 to 500. Last week, I accidentally left my phone in one of them. Unfortunately, I can’t recall the exact bus number, but I do remember two key details:
The bus number is a perfect square.
When the number is turned upside down, it forms a different perfect square.
Can you figure out which bus I left my phone on?
Answer below
OUR SOCIALS
 |