- In today’s CEO Daily: Nick Gordon on Nintendo’s astonishing 98% employee retention rate.
- The big story: Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery studios.
- The markets: Mostly up.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. When experienced employees leave–whether they get laid off, or jump ship for a better opportunity–they take their years, if not decades, of experience with them. Over time, the company loses that institutional knowledge.
But what happens when a company excels at keeping its workers?
Nintendo, the Japanese video game giant, is an example. Its Japanese employees spend an average of 15 years at the company, which boasts a yearly retention rate of 98%. That’s not just better than the layoff-prone video game industry, it’s better than most of Japan. The average Japanese worker spends 11 years at their company; in the U.S., that number is closer to four.
“The people who first made Nintendo’s hits are still working at the company,” Keza MacDonald, the author of Super Nintendo, a forthcoming book about the developer, told me recently. “For the last 50 years, these people have been passing down knowledge and training up a new generation of Nintendo creatives.”
Both Nintendo’s business and creative leaders have long tenures at the company. Current president Shuntaro Furakawa joined the company in 1994 as an accountant. Shigeru Miyamoto, the brains behind franchises like “Super Mario” and “The Legend of Zelda,” joined as a staff artist in 1977.
There is a risk that companies that rely too much on institutional knowledge get stuck in their ways. Yet Nintendo, according to MacDonald, has combined institutional knowledge with fresh ideas to continuously replenish its pipeline of fun games: “It’s not like the oldest guy gets to decide what’s a good idea and what isn’t. Everyone puts ideas in.”
Nintendo has its share of flops, failed experiments, and puzzling business decisions–as does every firm. Yet the company maintains its share of the highly competitive video game industry against bigger, deeper-pocketed rivals like Sony and Microsoft.
The few designers who’ve left Nintendo still have fond feelings about their time there. As Lee Schuneman, a former Nintendo game designer and now Efekta Education Group’s chief product officer, told our Brainstorm Design audience this week, “I got to work with some of the most talented game designers in the world, including people like [Shigeru Miyamoto] at Nintendo, and [learn] a whole range of lessons about how to make playful experiences.”
That goodwill may be the result of Nintendo avoiding the industry’s boom-bust churn and valuing the expertise its workforce accumulates.
Nintendo “is still, to this day, making games differently from everyone else,” MacDonald says. You can check out the rest of our mainstage sessions from Brainstorm Design here.—Nicholas Gordon
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery studios
The online streamer and the maker of the Superman and Harry Potter franchises are expected to announce a sale of Warner’s studios and HBO Max business to Netflix, the WSJ reports. Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison lobbied the White House against the deal even though Netflix offered a richer valuation, according to the New York Post.
“China’s Nvidia” stages IPO
Moore Threads, a maker of GPUs based in Beijing went public today at a valuation of $1.1 billion and its stock rose by 400% on day one.
$10 billion a week on U.S. national debt
The calendar year may have a few weeks left to tick off, but as far as the government’s budget is concerned, we’re in fiscal 2026. The Treasury has already paid out a 12-figure sum to service the nation’s debt. Unlike the tax and calendar year, the government’s financial calendar runs to the end of September. According to Treasury data, in the nine weeks since, it has spent $104 billion in interest on its $38 trillion borrowing burden. That’s more than $11 billion a week, and already represents 15% of federal spending in the current fiscal year.
Poor labor data may have locked in Fed cut
Analysts may not have necessarily digested this week’s lackluster labor data with glee—but it sure didn’t dampen their spirits either. Wall Street is hoping for a Christmas miracle with a final interest rate cut from the Fed, bringing the base rate down to 3.5% to 3.75%, and recent jobs reports may just have sealed the deal.
U.S. lobbied against E.U. seizing Russian money
American officials urged Europe not to use frozen Russian assets as the basis of loans that would fund Ukraine’s defense against Moscow’s invasion of its Eastern flank. The funds could be used as an incentive to end the war, Washington argued.
January 6 pipe bomb suspect arrested
Brian Cole Jr., 30 of Woodbridge, Virginia, was the subject of a five-year-long investigation by federal officials.
Wall Street forecasts S&P will hit 7,500
Analysts are publishing their notoriously unreliable annual stock market forecasts and this year nine investment banks are guessing that the market will rise about 10% in 2026.
The markets
S&P 500 futures were up 0.17% this morning. The last session closed up 0.11%. STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.18% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.19% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.05%. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.84%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 1.78%. India’s NIFTY 50 is up 0.55%. Bitcoin fell to $91.4K.
Around the watercooler
How a Texas gas producer plans to exploit the ‘mega trend’ of power plants for AI hyperscalers by Jordan Blum.
Battle for sports betting market heats up as Polymarket announces return to the U.S. by Carlos Garcia.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admits he works 7 days a week, including holidays, in a constant ‘state of anxiety’ out of fear of going bankrupt by Jessica Coacci.
Kim Kardashian shaped Skims into a $5 billion brand—now she wants to help other entrepreneurs mold their skills for success by Emma Hinchliffe.
CEO Daily was compiled and edited by Jim Edwards and Lee Clifford.
