Good morning.
Fortune has a new CEO poll out this morning, conducted over the last month in collaboration with Deloitte, which sponsors this newsletter. The big takeaways:
—CEO optimism about the outlook for the global economy has improved significantly from our last survey. 27% of respondents said they were optimistic, compared to only 7% last fall, and just 24% said they were pessimistic, compared to 47% last fall. That optimism is partly fueled by the fact that 76% of the respondents expect interest rates to ease by the end of September.
—Geopolitics was the top source of concern for the CEOs we surveyed, outranking rising regulation, which came second. Inflation concerns fell to third place, with only 27% ranking it among their top three concerns, compared to 51% in the previous survey. The labor and skills shortage, which was near top-of-mind last year, has fallen even more.
—Generative AI has invaded the corporate agenda at a speed unmatched by any previous technology. 58% of respondents said they are already implementing it to “automate manual tasks,” 56% said they are using it to increase efficiencies, 50% are using it to generate content, and 42% are using it to help write new code.
We’ll be discussing these trends this evening at a dinner gathering of members of the Fortune CEO Initiative—a group of CEOs committed to maximizing their positive social impact along with their profits. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins—who also heads the Business Roundtable—will be leading the conversation, fresh from his $28 billion acquisition of data firm Splunk. I’ll report back here tomorrow.
More detail on the survey here. And check out our Leadership Next podcast with guest Priscilla Almodovar, CEO of Fannie Mae, on Apple or Spotify.
Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Inflection point
Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman, the cofounder of DeepMind and, more recently, the $4 billion startup Inflection to run its AI operations. Inflection, now without its cofounder, will end development of its Pi chatbot and instead pivot to selling AI software to business clients. Another Inflection cofounder, Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman, sits on Microsoft’s board. Fortune
Too big to fail
The French government said it would protect the assets of Atos, an IT company that works with the country’s military and secret services, after shares sank almost 20% on Tuesday after Airbus dropped plans to buy Atos’s cybersecurity assets. Several deals to sell parts of Atos have fallen through in recent months, putting pressure on the cash-poor company. Reuters
Jet theft
Insurers and plane leasing companies are fighting over claims on the more than $10 billion worth of foreign-owned planes still stuck in Russia, two years after the country invaded Ukraine. Insurance companies argue that lessors should have done more to repossess the planes from Russia–and that the U.S. is in a de facto war with Russia, which would void some claims. Russian airlines have since re-registered these borrowed planes in Russia. The Wall Street Journal
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
Saudi Aramco CEO says it’s time to abandon the ‘fantasy’ of phasing out oil because the $9.5 trillion energy transition is on a ‘road to nowhere’ by Eleanor Pringle
Ben & Jerry’s maker Unilever is spinning off its ice cream unit and slashing up to 7,500 jobs amid activist investor pressure to streamline its business by Prarthana Prakash
Why a record number of wealthy Americans are looking overseas for another residence or citizenship by Alicia Adamczyk
Commentary: Finland passed its flexible work act in 1996–and it may partly explain why it’s the happiest nation by Miika Makitalo
Inside the turnaround plan to make Vans, Supreme, and The North Face cool again by Phil Wahba
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.
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