Good morning.
Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un signed a four-point document this morning, agreeing to establish new relations between the two countries and to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” Trump said there would be “many meetings” between the two leaders — including a possible visit by Kim to the White House — to figure out exactly how that gets achieved.
Meanwhile, Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women summit is underway in London. I wasn’t able to be there this year, but was interested in this interview Monday with Benevolent AI CEO Joanna Shields. Shields is an experienced technology executive who spent a quarter of a century at companies such as RealNetworks, Google and Facebook. She also has been deeply involved in government policy, as U.K. Minister for Internet Safety and Security.
Shields praised Google for coming out last week with a set of principles on how it will develop AI. (As I wrote last week, those principles included a misguided commitment not to participate in weapons development.) But she said that at the end of the day, rules for developing AI are “not going to be done by one company, it is also not going to be done by one government. It is going to be all of these organizations coming together at some point….You have to have a global strategy and a global commitment. Artificial intelligence is one of those big developments that are too large for any one company or one country to address.” That’s one more reason why blowing up the G7 alliance of like-minded countries is not a great idea.
I mentioned yesterday that I’m in Orlando at Johnson & Johnson’s Human Performance Institute, which was originally started for professional athletes but these days serves mainly corporate executives. Levi Strauss CEO Chip Bergh wrote in to say he first attended the program in 2002 and it “changed who I was as a leader…. I’ve seen the program literally change lives, confronting the ‘ugly truth’ about your health/fitness/wellness and your relationships.” He says he has since brought several leadership teams through the program, and even his two sons when they were in college. I’m just one day in, but impressed by the program’s focus on “energy management.” There’s this quote on the classroom wall from Peter Drucker: “Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your energy, and then to help orchestrate the energy of those around you.”
More news below.
| Alan Murray | |
| @alansmurray | |
| alan.murray@fortune.com |
Top News
North Korea
The Trump-Kim summit on Singapore's Sentosa Island produced a document, four bullet points, and lot of feeling. What comes next isn't totally clear, however. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un signed a document Tuesday asserting that the U.S. president would provide unspecified “security guarantees” to Kim in exchange for the North Korean leader’s “unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” In four bullet points, they laid out goals of future rounds of negotiations without specifying what immediate steps either side would take. Trump said there would be “many meetings” between the two men. Bloomberg
Kudlow Heart Attack
Larry Kudlow, the onetime CNBC host and current top economic advisor to President Donald Trump, was “doing well” Monday night after suffering a "very mild heart attack," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said from Singapore. An advocate within the administration of more robust trade, Kudlow accompanied Trump last weekend to the annual (and disastrous) G7 meeting in Quebec, where the president traded barbs with the leaders of Canada, Germany and France. Afterwards, Kudlow said on CNN’s State of the Union that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “really kind of stabbed us in the back." Bloomberg
Uber Difficulties
Bozoma Saint John is leaving Uber to become the chief marketing officer at Endeavor, the holding company for talent agencies WME and IMG. At Endeavor, the high-profile executive, brought in from Apple one year ago, will be responsible for connecting talent with brands (which she did on the brand side at PepsiCo. as head of music and entertainment marketing). As Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said goodbye to Saint John, he was also facing a homophobia scandal, this one related to a driver in Manhattan who kicked a lesbian couple out of his car for kissing. He said such drivers "don't belong on Uber." Fortune/New York Post
Zell Apology
Billionaire real estate investor Sam Zell apologized for using a vulgarity to describe women during a discussion on gender diversity last week. At the REITweek investor conference in Manhattan, Zell, the 76-year-old chairman of Equity Group Investments, said: “I don’t think there’s ever been a, ‘We gotta get more p---- on the block, OK?’” after saying that he promoted women on merit. In a follow-up email to attendees, the conference organizers said Zell had contacted them after the event to apologize for the remark and “express his regret” to the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. Bloomberg
Dieselgate, Again
Germany's Transport Ministry said 774,000 Mercedes-Benz vehicles were found to be carrying unauthorized software defeat devices in Europe and ordered Daimler to recall 238,000 cars in Germany. Of course, Daimler is far from the first German automaker to be investigated for the use of devices meant to defeat diesel emissions tests. Volkswagen was hit with some $30 billion in fines over an emissions cheating scandal that began in 2015, after it came to light that the automaker had outfitted defeat devices on millions of vehicles worldwide. Reuters/CNBC
Around the Water Cooler
Buffett, Cuban, Ice Cream
Billionaire buddies Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban had lunch at a Dairy Queen in Omaha, Neb. on Monday. A fellow diner took a photo of the charismatic investors and Cuban, the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, of course, posted the lunch on instagram, saying “No better guy to eat with at @dairyqueen.” Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought Dairy Queen in 1998. Fox Business
ZTE Settlement
ZTE Corp’s settlement with the U.S. Commerce Department—the one that would allow China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker to resume business with U.S. suppliers (and survive)—was made public on Monday, days after the company agreed to pay a $1 billion fine, overhaul its leadership and meet other conditions. But there's a catch: the ban on buying U.S. parts, imposed by the department in April, will not be lifted until the company pays the fine and places $400 million more in escrow in a U.S.-approved bank. Reuters
White House Wealth
Financial disclosure forms released Monday show that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made at least $82 million last year from multiple streams of outside income while they were senior White House advisers, according to the Washington Post. Despite public scrutiny of their finances amid questions of conflicts of interest, a spokesman for the couple’s lawyer said Trump and Kushner have followed the rules. The money Trump receives from limited liability companies associated with the Trump Organization has been restructured into annual fixed payments of $1.5 million. Fortune
Craigslist Donation
Craig Newmark, founder of the online classifieds site Craigslist, donated $20 million to the endowment of the graduate journalism school at the City University of New York (CUNY), which is changing its name to the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Newmark's gift comes with a touch of irony, of course: newspaper publishers once railed against his site as the destroyer of classified ads, a high-margin pillar in broadsheet and tabloid profits; a 2013 report in the journal Management Science estimated papers lost $5 billion to Craigslist between 2000 and 2007. Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Ian Mount. Find previous editions here, and sign up for other Fortune newsletters here.
