Albert Bourla explains how Pfizer moved so quickly to create its COVID-19 vaccine

Fortune’s CEO Initiative—a community of CEOs committed to boosting their positive returns to society as well as to shareholders—met in-person for the first time in two years yesterday. The opening speaker was Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, who spoke eloquently about how the private sector rose to the challenge of fighting the pandemic. Asked by Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell how a big, bureaucratic company like Pfizer managed to move so quickly, Bourla responded:

“We were all living things we had never lived before. We were scared. It was a time people needed to rise to the occasion, no matter what. It’s not that difficult to motivate someone to go way beyond what they normally do when they know what is at stake is you, your family, the world. The words I used with them were: ‘If not us, then who?’”

Bourla was unabashed in arguing the pandemic proved the value of a vibrant corporate sector:

“One of the lessons that stood up in this pandemic is the value to society of a vibrant private sector—in this case the life sciences industry. If we didn’t have a vibrant life sciences industry, we wouldn’t be here today.”

And he forcefully pushed back against the notion that society would be better served if Pfizer gave its intellectual property away so others could manufacture the vaccine:

“The idea that would immediately produce higher doses of the vaccine….I think that is wrong. I know this business. I know it very well. And I think that it is impossible…We are the only company that is going to make 4 billion doses next year.”

Later in the evening, two business leaders who attended the climate talks in Glasgow—BCG global chair Rich Lesser and Santander executive chair Ana Botin—told the assembled CEOs that the climate talks demonstrated a vastly increased commitment on the part of global businesses to address climate challenges. But both also agreed that more government action was needed to accelerate climate progress.

You can read more from the CEO Initiative here. Other news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

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Hey billionaires

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COP26 takeaways

Fortune's Katherine Dunn examines the most important question of the moment: was COP26 really a bust or a success? As she notes, the 1.5°C threshold is now being taken more seriously, though stated emissions-reduction targets don't suggest that limit will be achieved. "The Glasgow pact includes, remarkably, the first-ever references to fossil fuels in a COP document, and it’s something of a triumph that those words are there at all," she writes. "But the references are deeply qualified." (Bonus read: Sophie Mellor on how crypto-holding climate protesters justify that ownership, given the environmental impact.) Fortune

AROUND THE WATER COOLER

Price rises

Giants such as Nestlé and PepsiCo are banking on the idea that customers will stay loyal despite rising prices, but, as Megan Leonhardt reports, some experts say that confidence may be misplaced. Here's Phil "Supermarket Guru" Lempert: "Consumers are watching very carefully how much money they’re spending on groceries. They’ve seen the price of groceries go up. It’s continuing to go up. And just because you have a national brand that’s iconic for 100 years doesn’t mean that you can raise prices." Fortune

Fourth wave

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Beijing Stock Exchange

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DeFi vigilantes

Wired has a great piece on amateur detectives that are "trying to save DeFi from itself" by spotting "questionable practices". As the piece notes: "DeFi is arguably the wildest recess of cryptocurrency’s Wild West. Its advocates cast it as a happy digital island where investors have eliminated financial middlemen to interact on a peer-to-peer basis. Practically, it can at times resemble the digital equivalent of touring Las Vegas high on LSD." (Bonus read: Celebrity-backed NFTs are doing badly, and so are cryptocurrencies right now.) Wired

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.