The markets: The S&P 500 closed out the year at 5,881.63 — well below its high of 6,090 in December. Nonetheless, it added 23% for the year, an excellent performance for US stocks. Asia began the year with a selloff today — Chinese indexes were down nearly 3%. US futures were pointing to gains before the opening bell.
Today: The FBI is investigating whether the deadly terrorist attack in New Orleans is linked to the explosion of a Tesla truck outside a Trump building in Las Vegas. Both vehicles used in the attacks were rented via the Turo app.
Stephanie Ferris talks about risk
Good morning, and Happy New Year! And happy anniversary to Stephanie Ferris, who just finished her second year as CEO of Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), a Fortune 500 fintech giant that provides technology to banks, insurers and other capital markets players, enabling them to move money around the world.
She’s also the first woman to have led the company in its 50-year history and, as my colleague Luisa Beltran notes, is the most powerful woman in fintech. I’m often reluctant to mention gender [Look! A woman!] except that it clearly intensifies the spotlight–a reluctance that Ferris shares.
“I have always shied away from being the female anything, because I want to be the CFO. I want to be the CEO,” she told me when we spoke recently. “That being said, I’m super-proud of where women are.”
“The hardest part about being a new CEO for me is that it’s so public,” Ferris added. “I underestimated how much people would want to know about me personally.”
And yet, the self-described “very private Midwesterner” acknowledged that such attention makes it easier to help people “understand and know who FIS is … not only who we are, but why we’re so important as we fundamentally underpin the world’s economy.”
Ferris has focused on transforming the legacy technology company through acquisitions, new products and new ways of delivering those products and services to customers. She also came to the role with activist investors exerting pressure for change.
And what’s on her agenda for 2025?
“I’m really thinking hard about risk. I have over 55,000 people around the world in 64 countries. I think about not just for the human safety of my colleagues but protecting the business of FIS when there are countries at war. I think about a lot of cyber risk. Israel is a fantastic cyber vendor because they have some of the best cybersecurity firms. Do we have a backup? Can they move operations somewhere else?”
“And of course I think about innovation and Gen AI and are we as a technology company really focusing on what we should be doing. There needs to be a top-down Gen AI agenda and a bottom-up approach. It allows us to change the way we work and think about everything.”
Also on the radar today:
- Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have invested in a U.S. mining startup, KoBold Metals, that uses AI to locate new sources of critical minerals such as copper, lithium and nickel. The metals are crucial to the development of batteries and other electronics components but source markets are currently dominated by China.
- A survey of 220 economists suggests that most respondents believe Donald Trump’s economic plans — especially tariffs — will hurt U.S. economic growth by placing barriers in front of trade.
- The collapse of China’s property market since 2021 destroyed about $18 trillion in household wealth, according to an analysis by Barclays, leaving the country with millions of empty apartments and trillions in local government debt.
- Turkish Airlines has a bed bug problem, according to the New York Post.
- Justin Baldoni filed a defamation lawsuit against the The New York Times after the paper published a story alleging he orchestrated a systematic attempt to ruin the reputation of fellow actor Blake Lively.
From the analysts:
Apollo Global Management predicts another bullish year for private credit: “We continue to see a clear delta between credit spreads in the public and private markets—that is, investors can earn a premium for lending in the private markets.” See the deck here.
More news below.
Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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TOP NEWS
Paramount’s troubles spark yearlong layoffs
Paramount laid off around 2,000 workers in 2024—more than Warner Bros., Disney, and Netflix combined—as a year of instability took its toll on the entertainment company. Former employees tell Fortune that they remember working under “weeks of nonstop stress” as they waited for news about their jobs. David Ellison, CEO of soon-to-be Paramount owner Skydance Media, has promised a further $2 billion of “cost synergies” Fortune
BYD vs. Tesla
BYD sold 4.25 million cars in 2024, comfortably surpassing its sales targets and putting it in the same range as Honda and Ford. Around 1.7 million of those cars were battery electric vehicles, as BYD closes the gap with Tesla, its U.S. rival. Tesla will need to deliver over 400,000 cars in the last quarter of the year to keep its title as the world’s top seller of battery EVs; analysts expect the U.S. carmaker to deliver around 500,000 vehicles. Fortune
Boomers have affordability concerns too
Married 65-year-olds with at least $100,000 in financial assets are withdrawing an average of 2.1% of their savings each year, according to a new study from Prudential Financial. That’s half the usual rate for retirees, implying that boomers are choosing to continue to squirrel money away rather than spend it. Retirees are worried that their savings—if they have any—won’t be enough to sustain their lifestyles for multiple decades as costs go up. Fortune
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
Five underrecognized standout CEOs of the year by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian
Air travel is breaking records, but a lack of planes could result in headwinds in 2025 by Alex Ledsom
Wall Street’s predictions for the market and economy in 2025 by Paolo Confino
World’s richest man Elon Musk leaves Jeff Bezos in the dust, thanks to Donald Trump’s friendship by Brooke Seipel
South Korean police raid Jeju Air's office after country's worst-ever aviation disaster by AFP
What we know about the man who drove his truck into a crowd of New Orleans pedestrians, including work for the U.S. Army and Deloitte by the Associated Press
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon and Jim Edwards.
