Good morning.
I’m just back from hearing Citadel CEO Ken Griffin speak to a room full of financial journalists in support of the Knight-Bagehot journalism fellowship. (It’s a fabulous program that some Columbia J-school classmates used to wrongly assume I was in because I chased every financial writer prize posted on the bulletin board and my year in Kenya must have made me look mid-career at the age of 23.)
Griffin is the most successful hedge fund manager in history, according to the Institutional Investor scoreboard and interviewer Alan Murray, a name familiar to many readers as he created and wrote this newsletter. Griffin says reading about KKR cofounder Henry Kravis was “incredibly inspirational” in sparking his interest in business. Kravis intrigued me, too, ever since I discovered him as the steely architect of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in the book Barbarians at the Gate. The challenge for media today, Griffin said, is “this very awkward competition with social media” and a lack of trust as consumers find it hard to tell the difference between clickbait headlines and reporting-based analysis.
Nuance does matter. One media headline from the talk was that Griffin said he has not supported Donald Trump for president. While that’s technically true in terms of financial support, the longtime GOP donor did not say how he plans to vote, other than to acknowledge that he will not “have a smile on my face” when voting this time around. He is looking forward to 2028.
Meanwhile, Griffin insists he moved his family and Citadel’s headquarters to Miami because of crime in Chicago—not taxes, which he said are “the cost of a civilized society.” Griffin also said that he refused to fund Ron DeSantis in his presidential bid because of the Florida governor’s battle with Disney. And he thinks generative AI is overhyped. “Large language models are very good at solving a relatively small number of problems.”
I would have loved to follow up. But as I lingered by the empty chair at the table where he was slated to come back and sit, it appears Griffin had left the building.
More news below.
Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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TOP NEWS
"Doom" economist favors Harris
The economist who predicted the 2008 recession said this week that he believes Vice President Harris would be a better president for the economy than Donald Trump. Nouriel Roubini, known colloquially as Dr Doom, thinks Trump's economic policies could lead to "higher risks of stagflationary outcomes." Fortune
"Godfather of AI" loses his faith
Geoffrey Hinton is one of two men who won the Nobel prize in physics this week for laying the foundations of modern-day AI models. Hinton helped develop neural networks that helped develop our current AI models, but has spent the past two years ringing the alarm about the technology he says can outsmart humans and take over. Fortune
Wells Fargo: Boeing will sell at least $10 billion in stock
Wells Fargo predicts that Boeing will sell between $10 and $15 billion in stock to offset losses from an ongoing workers' strike. The airplane manufacturer suspended negotiations with union leadership this week, citing unreasonable demands. Fortune
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
Companies are more willing to consider covering weight-loss drugs by Chris Morris
Delta shares bounce back after airline reveals $380 million hit from CrowdStrike outage by Greg McKenna
A top affirmative action lawyer said that some companies are caving to DEI criticism because ‘they’re wimps’ by Emma Burleigh
Britain’s workforce faces the crisis of its life as productivity has fallen to Victorian-era lows and youth worklessness spikes by Prarthana Prakash
Tesla’s soon-to-be-unveiled robo-taxi may already be behind its Chinese competition by Lionel Lim
Trump advisor proposes a shadow Fed chair, but Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni thinks it’s a recipe for disaster by Christiaan Hetzner
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Joey Abrams.
