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Good morning.
Big changes in store for the world of business, according to the Fortune 500 CEOs who answered our annual survey. A majority believe economic activity won’t return to the level it was before the pandemic hit until the first quarter of 2022. A majority also believe that business travel will never return to pre-pandemic levels. And 27% say that a substantial portion of their workforce (more than 10%) that moved to working from home during the pandemic will stay there indefinitely.
The CEOs also give Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and U.S. governors high marks for their handling of the crisis. But they give President Trump, the U.S. Congress, the Chinese government and the World Health Organization low marks. You can view the details, which were published online this morning, here.
As I mentioned earlier this week, roughly half the CEOs believe the crisis will accelerate the move toward stakeholder capitalism. One who falls firmly in that camp is Intel CEO Bob Swan–his company is a regular on Fortune’s Change the World list. This morning, Swan announced an ambitious set of targets for his company and his industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transition to green power, restore clean water to local communities, eliminate landfill waste, combat human rights abuses in the supply chain, and double the number of women and minorities in leadership positions.
I talked with Swan last week about why he was ramping up these social goals. “I have found this so helpful internally,” he said, “including as we confronted COVID. We said let’s make sure we are using our purpose as a screen for how we attack these problems. It is not “How is our product going to be the best?,” but rather “How do we make sure we enrich lives on earth?”
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Stocks down
Yesterday's stock market drop in the U.S., which was precipitated by Fed Chair Jerome Powell's warming about a prolonged recession, has continued around the world. The Hang Seng dropped by 1.5% and the Nikkei 225 by 1.7%, after which the Stoxx Europe 600 fell by a similar amount. At the time of writing, U.S. futures suggest a flat open. P.S.: Some Wall Street heavyweights are also saying stocks are overvalued right now. Wall Street Journal
Vaccine outrage
A French government minister has said it would be "unacceptable" for the U.S. (or any other country) to get priority access to a Sanofi vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Although Sanofi is a French company, the U.S. was the first to fund its research, so CEO Paul Hudson said this week that the U.S. expects to get the resulting vaccine first. World leaders and experts are pushing for a global "people's vaccine". Bloomberg
Facebook settlement
Facebook has paid $52 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought about by its content moderators, over the heavy psychological consequences of their jobs, i.e. reviewing videos of things like rape or terrorism to keep them off the social network. The settlement only applies to U.S.-based content moderators working through third-party companies; expect similar cases to hit other platforms that require heavy content moderation, such as YouTube and Twitter. Washington Post
Google diversity
Google has recently scaled back or completely cut its diversity and inclusion initiatives, multiple current and former employees have told NBC News. One program to be cut was Sojourn, in which workers were taught about implicit bias and how to talk about race and inequality. All of the sources apparently said independently that they believed Google was trying to avoid a conservative backlash. NBC News
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Food crisis
"You can have a food crisis with lots of food. That’s the situation we’re in," said senior economist Abdolreza Abbassian, of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. The problem lies in the broken-down transport of produce, combined with the collision of soaring prices and shrinking incomes. In other words, it’s both a demand-side and supply-side crisis, at a global level. Wall Street Journal
Russian hacking
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has blamed Russia for the "outrageous" hacking attack on her country's parliament back in 2015. "I can honestly say that it hurts me," said Merkel (who speaks fluent Russian and has had an amicable relationship with Putin). "On the one hand, I try to improve relations with Russia on a daily basis, and when then, on the other hand, we see that there is hard evidence that Russian forces are operating in such a way, then we are working in a field of tension, which is something that—despite the desire for good relations with Russia—I cannot completely erase from my heart." Politico
Who pays?
Who pays for the pandemic when insurance companies will not? That's the question delved into by Fortune's Jeff John Roberts, who writes: "As many businesses are belatedly discovering, most policies contain language requiring the loss to be a consequence of physical events. Interruptions caused by 'civil authorities,' seemingly including stay-at-home orders, are also often covered. Even in those cases, however, businesses must still typically experience physical damage, either to their buildings or nearby, to trigger coverage…These hurdles haven’t stopped enterprising lawyers for policyholders to seek loopholes." Fortune
Restarting tourism
Europe's attempt to restart tourism will need to be accompanied by interoperable contact-tracing apps, the European Commission has said. Each EU country is building its own contact-tracing app, and there are two diverging approaches being taken—which would hamper the functionality of these essential coronavirus-warning systems when users cross borders for a holiday. Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
