- In today’s CEO Daily: Phil Wahba digs into the trend of activists targeting female CEOs.
- The big story: All eyes on the Fed.
- The markets: Mixed, with Asia recording narrow losses.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. When Victoria’s Secret reported stellar quarterly results last week, shares shot up 14% and likely gave Hillary Super some breathing room from the activist investors pushing the lingerie company to, among other things, consider whether the CEO of 16 months is up to the task of turning it around.
Of course, the potential of having to deal with an activist investor’s campaign goes with the territory of being a CEO, especially at a company that has been struggling. But Super’s saga is a reminder that women CEOs remain much likelier than their male counterparts to be targeted by activist investors.
This year, according to a report last week by the Conference Board with Esgauge data, women have made up 8% of the CEOs in the Russell 3000 index but accounted for 15% of activist campaigns specifically targeting chief executives. Other women to have recently confronted activists: Cracker Barrel’s Julie Masino, who survived a campaign, and Vail Resorts’ Kirsten Lynch, who did not.
What makes the Conference Board report especially frustrating is that it adds more proof points to an old, seemingly intractable trend.
In 2015, the New York Times’ DealBook pondered “Do Activist Investors Target Female CEOs?” while Fortune’s Pattie Sellers asked “Does Nelson Peltz have a problem with women?” In 2017, Harvard Law School found that women CEOs had almost a 50% higher probability than men of becoming the target of shareholder activism.
Why? One reason, the Conference Board theorized, is rooted in a stereotype that women are more cooperative. It’s also conceivable that the trend reflects the glass cliff phenomenon in which women often take the helm of companies in decline. But there is almost certainly some bias at play. The Conference Board research showed that women targeted by activists face the same odds of being canned whether they turn things around or not, while male CEOs are less likely to be ousted when results improve.
Some of the most prominent women chief executives ever have tangled with activists: PepsiCo’s ex-CEO Indra Nooyi, ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, ex-DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman, ex-Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld, ex-HP CEO Meg Whitman, and Mary Barra, still at GM. Michelle Gass, now thriving as CEO of Levi Strauss & Co, dealt with not one but three activist campaigns as she tried to fix Kohl’s.
Everyone should be held accountable when their company is failing or on a bad path. But it is worth wondering what this extra hurdle women CEOs face is costing us. Activist campaigns are bruising to the company but also to a CEO’s reputation. Does this mean boards might be more likely to avoid naming a woman to lower the odds of an activist campaign, or that fewer women will throw their hat in the ring?
Either way, it seems the phenomenon could needlessly be costing corporate America some much needed talent.—Phil Wahba
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
Fed watch
All eyes will be on the Fed meeting today even though an interest rate cut is all but certain. Instead, investors will focus on Chair Jerome Powell’s tone and whether he characterizes Fed policy as “in a good place;” doing so would imply that a January cut is unlikely.
Fed chair watch
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has narrowed down the candidates to replace Powell as Fed chair. The frontrunner is National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, but to clinch the job he’ll reportedly have to outshine three other contenders in the final round of interviews, suggesting he's not a shoo-in for the job.
Trump’s affordability tour
In his first in a series of speeches about “affordability,” President Trump mocked the term and insisted that Americans are doing better than ever. In reality, U.S. inflation is close to 3%, about where it was when Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden left office.
Miami’s mayoral race
As Trump railed against affordability, Eileen Higgins, a Democrat, defeated Trump’s favored candidate in Miami’s mayoral race with a campaign focused in part on affordable housing. She’s the first Democrat to occupy Miami’s City Hall in three decades (and the first-ever woman), giving Democrats another jolt of momentum ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Taiwan’s chip action
Taiwan is invoking a national security law to protect the trade secrets of its homegrown chipmaker TSMC and has used it to indict a TSMC supplier for allegedly letting a former employee steal details about TSMC’s top chips.
Layoffs hit 1.1 million
Recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has calculated the number of layoffs so far this year at 1.1 million, the sixth time since 1993 that layoffs have been that high. Technology was the hardest hit sector with 150,000 layoffs.
Americans ‘living on the financial edge’
Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi told Fortune that many Americans are “already living on the financial edge,” and that a drop in their spending could lead to a recession. If layoffs increase, then Zandi estimates that a “jobs recession” is certain.
Sam Altman worries about ‘rate of change’
During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that he’s worried about “the rate of change that’s happening in the world right now.” He added that the “rate at which jobs will change over may be pretty fast,” with hopes that “much better jobs” will follow.
The markets
S&P 500 futures were up 0.05% this morning. The last session closed down 0.09%. STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.19% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.14% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.1%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.14%. The South Korea KOSPI was down 0.21%. India’s NIFTY 50 is down 0.32%. Bitcoin is up at $93K.
Around the watercooler
New contract shows Palantir is working on a tech platform for another federal agency that works with ICE by Jessica Mathews
Trump’s $12 billion farmer bailout is a ‘Band-Aid on a bigger wound’ the American agriculture industry is still reeling from by Sasha Rogelberg
Exelon CEO: The ‘warning lights are on’ for U.S. electric grid resilience and utility prices amid AI demand surge by Jordan Blum
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.
