- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady wraps up a week at Davos.
- The big story: Trump sues Dimon and JPMorgan.
- The markets: Mixed globally, with U.S. futures edging down.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink became co-chair of the World Economic Forum last year, he called up U.S. President Donald Trump and asked him to come speak, which he did. Fink also called Scott Galloway, an author, podcaster and NYU Stern marketing professor who has a very different view of what will make America great. As Galloway told me last night at our annual Fortune Global Leadership Dinner: “Larry Fink called me and said, ‘I want you to come.’ That was more than enough.”
With all the focus at WEF on heads of state—I even joined a media scrum after Trump’s meeting with Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky—I thought I’d bring you some insights from my conversation with Galloway. (I first met Galloway in 2009 as a fellow mentor at the Kairos Summit organized by then Wharton student Ankur Jain, who went on to found Bilt Group.)
Galloway last attended WEF in 1999. “The call sign of America back then was consumerism; it was more cooperation, alliances. Now, I feel the American brand is chaos, corruption, and coercion,” he said. “America has been the operating system of the world … There’s just a sense of unease … In 1999, we said ‘we want more,’ now we want to make sure things don’t get worse.” He praised Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech as the best of the week. “All 27 member EU states should have been sitting behind him,” Galloway said. “Right now, it’s like Germany and the 26 dwarves.”
In soliciting both Galloway and Trump to come to Davos, Fink understands the power of WEF in bringing opposing world views under one roof. I heard Saudi Tourism Minister HE Ahmed Al-Khateeb compare notes with Switzerland Tourism CEO Martin Nydegger, saw Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick chat with random people in the hall, including me, and witnessed dozens of global leaders find areas of commonality at our dinners and lunches. (That’s why I also appreciated having Deloitte, Aon, PMI, Toptal, and Workday sponsor editorial gatherings that let us create our own village greens.)
On Monday, I moderated a CEO salon to discuss the results of the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, in which 70% of this year’s respondents expressed an “insular” mindset; they don’t want to talk to, work for, or even be in the same space with anyone who doesn’t share their world view. Richard Edelman told me CEOs need to urgently address the sense of grievance that’s consuming the business world.
What leaders achieved at Davos is never immediately obvious—the details of the Greenland deal, for one, are still sketchy—but by showing up, Davos participants were at least coming together with an instinct to connect. That’s a good place to start.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
Trump sues Dimon, JPMorgan
President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase on Thursday with a $5 billion lawsuit that claims the financial giant “unbanked” the president and his businesses for political reasons. Dimon has recently butted heads with Trump over Fed independence and the president’s plan to cap credit card interest rates. The bank says the lawsuit is without merit.
Oil CEOs on Venezuela
President Donald Trump has urged U.S. companies to invest in Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, but cheap fuel at home means slimmer profit margins for those companies. “I think everyone feels a bit slighted here,” the CEO of one big U.S. oil company told Fortune.
Using AI to ‘solve’ disease
Demis Hassabis, the Nobel Prize winner and pioneer behind Google Gemini, gave Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle a rare look inside his latest venture, Isomorphic Labs, an AI drug-design company that aims to create new, breakthrough medicines for some of the most “undruggable” diseases. “We’re trying to build a system, a process…to do maybe dozens of drugs each year,” he says.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.23% this morning. The last session closed up 0.55%. STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.27% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.10% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.29%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.45%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.76%. India’s NIFTY 50 was down 0.95%. Bitcoin was at $89K.
Around the watercooler
Elon Musk makes the case for why his $2.2 trillion tech empire is the only way to save humanity as the only intelligent life in the universe by Sasha Rogelberg
TradFi firms are increasingly warming to cryptocurrencies, says Bybit CEO Ben Zhou by Angelica Ang
Trump’s Greenland gambit followed a familiar playbook—one he wrote himself by Eva Roytburg
McDonald’s CEO shares tough love career advice he’d give Gen Z and young millennial workers: ‘No one cares about your career’ by Orianna Rosa Royle
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.
