Good morning.
I wrote Monday that the job of a CEO is becoming increasingly difficult. If that’s true for CEOs, then it must be even more true for boards. They are the ones ultimately responsible for succession plans, and they must clean up the mess when those plans fail. They are also responsible for the company’s connection with a widening array of stakeholders. And they are expected to be up to speed on an ever-larger array of issues, from cyber security to geopolitics to the mind-spinning consequences of A.I. Who can possibly do such a job well?
In an effort to answer that question, Fortune has conspired with our partner Diligent to bring you the second annual list of The Modern Board 25. This isn’t as easy as calculating, say, the Fortune 500, which is based on a clear set of public data about a company’s revenues. Instead, we have relied on proxy data, which looks at the experience and independence of directors, their diversity, their longevity, their financial performance and their exposure to activists. The ranking also takes into account how the company has performed on a variety of ESG metrics, using data from Refinitiv. The result is a work in progress, but we think it provides an important new metric for measuring how boards are responding to the demands of the modern world.
So who passes this grade? Well, you’ll find this year’s list contains some well-known companies—like Walgreens (No. 10), Citigroup (No. 12), Amazon (No. 17) and Microsoft (No. 21). It also contains some companies you probably have never heard of, like No. 1 on the list—F5 Inc., a Seattle-based cyber security and application delivery firm. But we think this is the beginning of an important effort. Great companies need great boards, and The Modern Board 25 is designed to identify and nurture them. Let us know what you think.
You can read more about the list here. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
COVID’s end?
The White House said it would revoke COVID vaccine requirements for both international travelers and federal workers, starting Friday. Ashish Jha, who coordinates the U.S. response to the pandemic, told reporters that the mandates were “no longer necessary to protect Americans.” The U.S. public health emergency, along with several COVID measures, will end on May 11. Reuters
Stuck in a meeting
Data from Microsoft finds that workers are spending as much as two full working days a week responding to emails and meeting with colleagues. The software company found that its users spend 57% of their working day using Microsoft’s communication programs like Outlook or Teams, instead of "creation" software like Word. The shift to remote work has increased the amount of time workers now spend communicating with each other online. The Wall Street Journal
Airbnb earnings
Airbnb shares plunged by 11.9% in after-hours trading after the travel company warned that it expected fewer bookings and lower rates in the coming quarter. Travel is returning to pre-pandemic patterns following last year’s “revenge travel” boom, and consumers are looking for less expensive holidays thanks to inflation. Airbnb recently announced cheaper accommodation options for users to combat increasing rental rates on the platform. CNBC
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
A 23-year-old Snapchat influencer used OpenAI’s technology to create an A.I. version of herself that will be your girlfriend for $1 per minute by Alexandra Sternlicht
IKEA’s CEO says he only climbed from assistant to the C-suite by not pursuing a ‘shimmering’ title by Jane Thier
Bosses and workers are finally reaching a ‘truce’ on remote work by Alicia Adanczyk
How the Pepe coin, ‘fueled by pure memetic power,’ soared past a $1.6 billion market cap in 3 weeks—and then tumbled by Ben Weiss
Pernod Ricard North America CEO’s mother was killed by a drunk driver. It inspired her to lead the liquor giant: ‘The universe was trying to tell me something’ by Emma Hinchliffe and Claire Zillman
Just 41% of C-suite execs are ‘highly confident’ in their company’s cash and liquidity management by Sheryl Estrada
Ferrari may eventually make an EV but it has zero interest in self-driving cars: ‘We don’t care’ by Tristan Bove
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.
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