- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady interviews Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good, who offers advice to her younger self as she prepares to exit the job.
- The markets are strongly up.
- Israel and Hamas’s fragile peace deal is in doubt.
- Analyst notes from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and McKinsey.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Duke Energy’s Lynn Good on CEO succession planning: Good Morning from DLD in Munich, where there’s much relief and discussion about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Co-chair Yossi Vardi is an Israeli entrepreneur who helped develop the tech sector there.
Succession can be a bruising affair. And yet replacing yourself is clearly one of leader’s core tasks. I spoke with Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good, who this week announced that she’s stepping down on April 1 after more than a decade in the job, which president Harry Sideris will now take on.
She’s been developing plans around high-potential leaders for the past several years, meeting with the board twice a year to update them on progress and plot future moves for the team. “Every leader, in my view, has the responsibility to develop a success group,” she told me.
And what advice would she give to her first-year self and other newbie CEOs? “Always keep your eyes on the horizon, trying to look around the corner, so that you have a set of accountabilities on the things that are the present, but you don’t let the present drown out what you ought to be trying to accomplish over the long term.”
“We have transitioned into a growth industry,” said Good. “The data center growth alone is stronger than anything that we’ve seen in decades. You couple that with some of the policy changes with chip manufacturers and the onshoring of US manufacturing … Nuclear is going to have a role to play. Natural gas is going to have a role to play. Renewables will have a role to play. Battery storage will have a role to play, and energy efficiency.”
“I’m looking forward to having a little more control over my time. Because in this job, you’re sort of on all the time, I’ll be taking a little bit of time to breathe … and then I’ll see what’s next.”
The markets:
- The S&P 500 is making another attempt to beat its all-time high: The index closed up nearly 2% yesterday at 5,949.91 … U.S. futures were trading at $6,006.50 before the opening bell … Asia and Europe were broadly up, too … And Bitcoin was above the $98,000 level.
On the radar
The Gaza peace deal may collapse: Israel’s Netanyahu is already accusing Hamas of failing to agree to all elements of the peace deal and will not call a cabinet meeting to endorse it until they do, the FT reports.
President-elect Donald Trump’s “belligerent tone” helped set the context for the Israel-Hamas peace deal, some say.
Going viral amongst finance types: Hindenburg Research founder Nate Anderson is winding up his short-seller fund after six “rather intense, and at times, all-encompassing” years of making headlines. He wrote a thoughtful goodbye note here.
President Trump is planning to save TikTok in the U.S. according to Michael Waltz, his national security adviser. There are few other details on how this might happen.
More pension funds are buying Bitcoin. These large institutional investors don’t like missing out on a rising asset class. The downside? Risk, obviously.
President Biden warned of “oligarchy” in his farewell speech. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” he said.
From the analysts
- Goldman Sachs on the dollar: “…we expect it will strengthen further by another 5% or so in 2025 …. Mechanically, a strong US dollar weighs on the non-US sales of US companies. A company with sales outside the US nonetheless reports those sales in USD. If the USD is strong, those sales are worth less when converted back to USD. Historical revenue data confirm this dynamic: Every 10 pp rise in the USD weighs on year/year quarterly sales growth by roughly 4 pp, after controlling for nominal GDP growth,” Ryan Hammond and team wrote in a note seen by Fortune.
- Bank of America on US interest rates: “… the labor market appears to have stabilized close to full employment. With [Fed] policy rates now 100bp lower and tail risks to the labor market appearing to have dissipated, we don’t see much justification for cuts,” writes Aditya Bhave in a note seen by Fortune.
- Panmure Liberum’s Joachim Klement on falling prices and rising yields in the global bond market. Commenting on a research paper by Martin Ademmer and Jamie Rush, he writes: “This is a watershed moment, we are witnessing here. For the first time in the last 50 years we see evidence that bond markets are demanding a ‘risk premium’ for US Treasuries because supply outstrips demand.”
- McKinsey on falling fertility rates and population collapse, predicted for later this century: “GDP per capita growth could slow by 0.4 percent annually on average from 2023 to 2050, and up to 0.8 percent in some countries, unless productivity growth increases by two to four times or people work one to five hours more per week,” writes Anu Madgavkar and team.
More news below.
Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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TOP NEWS
Volkswagen and Porsche CEO struggles to juggle both roles
Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume is facing calls to step down as the part-time CEO of subsidiary Porsche as the latter faces a significant sales crisis. Volkswagen owns 75% of Porsche and critics say Blume risks running both automakers into the ground if he doesn’t focus on one. Fortune
More Meta cuts on the way
Meta plans on firing around 5% of their lowest-performing employees and is warning employees to prepare for an “intense year,” per a message to employees sent by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday. The CEO plans on backfilling the roles, Bloomberg reported. Fortune
FTC drops massive health care report
A new Federal Trade Commission report accuses UnitedHealth Group, CVS, and Cigna of appropriating an extra $7.3 billion collectively from 2018 to 2022 by price-gouging certain drugs, some by thousands of percent. CVS criticized the report as “cherry picking,” UnitedHealth insisted that it is helping save patients money, and Cigna has yet to respond. Fortune
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: It’s time for investors to rethink long-held principles about stocks and bonds by Ashley Lutz
BlackRock and Vanguard own huge amounts of bank shares—but only one agrees with FDIC policy on undue influence by Michael Del Castillo
TikTok’s CEO used to work for Mark Zuckerberg as a Facebook intern. Just one decade later, he’s become one of Meta’s fiercest competitors by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
4 iconic U.S. companies are in stormy waters—2 CEOs are possibly lost at sea, while 2 may be piloting safely to shore by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques
Bond yields are soaring—and that could pose a problem for Trump by Greg McKenna
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is still causing flight delays years after a single rocket launch disrupted 563 planes by Sasha Rogelberg
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
