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# What Optus and ANZ can teach investors about founder-led companies
- URL: https://research.lumenaryinvest.com/afr-optus-anz-founder-led-companies/
- Published: 2025-10-08T12:03:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-10-08T12:03:00.000Z
- Description: Optus and ANZ were not unlucky. Both failures trace back to how decisions get made inside large bureaucracies.
- Author: Lawrence Lam
- Tags: Governance

*First published in [the Australian Financial Review](https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/what-optus-and-anz-can-teach-investors-about-founder-led-companies-20251001-p5mzbq?ref=research.lumenaryinvest.com), 8 October 2025.*

Two of Australia’s largest companies spent September in the headlines for the wrong reasons: Optus over its national outage and the warnings that preceded it, ANZ over a record penalty for widespread misconduct. Neither was simple bad luck. Both point to how decisions get made inside large bureaucratic organisations, and shareholders carry the cost.

This piece sets out the cognitive biases that take hold in boardrooms — groupthink, confirmation bias, anchoring and risk aversion — and why director incentives almost guarantee conservative behaviour. It contrasts that with founder-led challengers such as Judo Bank, where personal wealth, reputation and legacy are on the line, and argues that founder ownership should be read as a signal of decision-making quality rather than a governance footnote.

[**Read the full article at the Australian Financial Review →**](https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/what-optus-and-anz-can-teach-investors-about-founder-led-companies-20251001-p5mzbq?ref=research.lumenaryinvest.com)