Macquarie also reserves the right to exclude the media from any session. This happened in May when journalists were banned from the presentation by EML Payments, which issued a profit downgrade three weeks before the Macquarie conference.

Where are the hard questions?

Corporate conferences with sanitised content are not a new thing. They grew out of the peculiar concept of companies paying advertising dollars to win awards which were presented at black tie dinners.

But you would think an organisation like Macquarie, which has so many smart people, would resist the temptation to run a summit devoid of hard questions.

Macquarie chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake fell into this trap with her interview with Canva co-founder Cameron Adams.

Canva is arguably Australia’s most successful private tech company. Its platform for creating presentations on a web browser is now available in 100 languages and is used in 190 countries.

As you would expect, Wikramanayake’s interview with Adams is respectful and informative. It explores Canva’s community engagement and the effort that has gone into deepening its social licence to operate.

But it is extraordinary that Wikramanayake did not ask any questions about tech valuations or the fact that a major shareholder in Canva, Franklin Templeton, this month wrote down its investment in the company by 58 per cent.

She knows this is an issue of tremendous interest to investors, judging from her opening comments to the tech summit.

“Since the start of this year we’ve seen technology valuations fall more than the broader market, driven by the prospect of rising interest rates and more expensive funding, as well as some of the tailwinds from the COVID lockdowns reversing,” she said.

“We’ll be joined by market commentators to help us make sense of this tech correction, and we’ll hear first-hand from those providing capital to digital and technology-enabled businesses, to assess how this shifting backdrop has impacted their approach.

“At Macquarie we remain optimistic. While the enthusiasm and specific circumstances that drove valuations to record heights were always set to lose some momentum, technology’s long-term role in addressing societal challenges is undiminished.”

Wikramanayake said this was “a moment for businesses to review their models, perhaps to consider a more conservative near-term approach to their available capital and funding”.

The Canva session was not the only high-profile interview with the critical missing ingredient: searching questions.

An interview with the legendary Iger, who worked at Disney for 47½ years, including 15 running the company, was conducted in the equivalent of a bubble removed from the real world.

The interview was conducted by Michael Silverton, group head of Macquarie Capital.

Iger is such an outstanding corporate success story that anything he says about business, investment, entrepreneurs and the media landscape is compelling.

But Silverton could not bring himself to ask Iger about the handful of burning issues facing his former company, including the 45 per cent decline in the share price, the turmoil surrounding Disney’s management including the fate of CEO Bob Chapek, and the controversy in Florida over Disney’s support for the LGBTQ community.

Chanticleer is not suggesting that the Macquarie tech summit will not be true to label and deliver “unique perspectives on the opportunities presented by the disruptive impact of technology”.

But the softly-softly approach to corporate interviews means the content will almost certainly lack the rigour and insight that comes with truly independent questioning of those keen on selling a corporate story.