- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady interviews Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta.
- The big story: The U.S. government shutdown is finally over.
- The markets: Mixed, with small gains in Asia.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Chris Nassetta admits it took a long time for Hilton Worldwide to become a truly great place to work. Founded by Conrad Hilton in 1919, the hotel giant was acquired in 2007 by Blackstone, which brought in Nassetta as CEO. “We had this really unique culture, and we had sort of lost touch with it,” he told me earlier this week.
Nassetta more than tripled the number of properties to 9,000+, added 10 new brands, took the company public again, and successfully pivoted the company from owning properties to an asset-light model. He’s also reduced staff turnover to almost half the industry rate while generating high levels of employee satisfaction. The result: Hilton grabbed the No. 1 spot on Fortune’s 2025 list of the World’s Best Workplaces, compiled by research partner Great Place to Work. Here is a link to the full list, which Fortune published this morning.
Nassetta shared some lessons from turning things around:
Go top down and bottom up: “The top down is about making everybody in an organization feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, like what they do matters. They’re seen. Bottom up is about the pay and benefits and programs like learning and development. We didn’t have a team member travel program and now we do. That’s a huge benefit.”
Tell stories: “We were telling the stories of all the things they were doing to help people understand why they matter and how that work aggregates up into something that’s really powerful. If you look at brands like Spark and Waldorf Astoria, the product and service levels are wildly different. What’s common: things like the technology and delivering a reliable, consistent experience in a friendly way.”
Stay the course: “It’s going to be really hard work. You need to be agile, but at the same time, you can’t jerk the wheel all around. This takes years. You can’t be chasing every little shiny object. I’ve been here 18 years. My number one initiative was to rebuild the culture and everything else would flow. And I started day one, grinding. I said things so many times I thought I would puke, but the people who were hearing it had never heard it before. We had to figure out the mistakes and adjust. Test ideas. Use real data. Do team member engagement surveys. Listen to what your people are saying.
I have 500,000 people. You can never really know what’s going on, so you’ve got to create the right infrastructure and the right listening posts, have the right data and make sure that you’re using it and acting on it.”
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
U.S. government shutdown ends
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill ending the U.S.’s longest government shutdown after the legislation narrowly passed the House. The measure will fund the government through January and will restore some government services, like SNAP benefits, immediately. Other disruptions, like reduced air travel, will take longer to return to normal.
U.K. economy contracts
The U.K. economy unexpectedly contracted by 0.1% in September, adding pressure on the ruling Labour party to boost growth. Labour is expected to break a core promise by raising taxes in its budget this month. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing push-back from within his own party.
Boring Co. coverup
After Elon Musk’s tunneling startup, Boring Co., was cited for serious safety violations in Nevada, the governor’s office stepped in and the citations and fines were rescinded. Then someone deleted evidence of that meeting. The series of events “raises questions about the degree to which a powerful business is able to bend regulatory guardrails to its will and skirt proper oversight,” Fortune’s Jessica Mathews and Leo Schwartz report.
Cloudflare CEO takes aim at Google
In a conversation with Fortune at Web Summit, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says Google is abusing its search monopoly to feed its AI models. “The great patron of the internet for the last 27 years was Google. The great villain of the internet today is also Google,” Prince said.
OpenAI expects hefty losses through 2028
Financial documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal reveal that OpenAI expects to report massive losses every year through 2028 before swinging towards profits in 2030. That includes a projected loss of roughly $74 billion in 2028, the same year that rival Anthropic expects to break even for the first time.
Renters stuck following collapse of short-term rental platform
Marriott abruptly ended its partnership with short-term rental company Sonder earlier this week, leaving thousands of customers with just 24 hours to vacate their rentals and find alternatives. The next day, Sonder announced plans to file for bankruptcy. Interim CEO Janice Sears said the company is “devastated to reach a point where a liquidation is the only viable path forward.”
Circle shares drop 8% following first earnings announcement
Shares of stablecoin issuer Circle dropped more than 8% on Wednesday following its first quarterly earnings announcement as a public company. Investors dumped shares despite Circle posting better-than-expected revenue and earnings. Investor skepticism appear tied to declining returns on the reserve that backs its flagship USDC stablecoin.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.04% this morning. The last session closed up 0.06%. STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.09% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.4% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.43%. China’s CSI 300 was up 1.21%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.49%. India’s NIFTY 50 is up 0.01%. Bitcoin was down at $103K.
Around the watercooler
When will I know if my flight is canceled? Here’s what to expect as delays ripple across U.S. airports by Jessica Coacci
Trump, who slapped an extra $100,000 on the H-1B visa, now says there aren’t enough talented people in the U.S. to fill jobs by Sasha Rogelberg
Kim Kardashian’s Skims is now worth $5 billion after a massive $225 million funding round led by Goldman Sachs by Dave Smith
Ford CEO says he has 5,000 open mechanic jobs with 6-figure salaries from the shortage of manually skilled workers: ‘We are in trouble in our country’ by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Claire Zillman.