Huawei Vendors, T-Mobile and Sprint, Trump vs Pelosi: CEO Daily for May 23, 2019
Good morning.
Thanks to all who tried out our Fortune 500 CEO poll. Some clear differences emerged between the CEO Daily reader and the 500 chief execs:
–CEO Daily readers are slightly more pessimistic than the big company CEOs. 65% of readers foresee a recession within the next two years, compared to just 48% of the big company CEOs.
–CEO Daily readers are less supportive of Trump’s China policy than Fortune 500 CEOs, with only 48% supporting it, compared to 80% of CEOs. (There could be a timing issue here, as most of the CEOs answered before the recent breakdown in trade talks.)
–CEO Daily readers are more inclined to increased regulation of tech companies—with 68% favoring more regulation of Facebook, and 49% favoring more regulation of both Amazon and Alphabet. The Fortune 500 crowd was at 51%, 41% and 39%, respectively.
–Some 33% of CEO Daily readers agreed with the statement that “capitalism is in crisis, and needs a major overhaul to better serve society,” compared to just 5% of the Fortune 500 CEOs. Only 11% of readers agreed with the statement that “capitalism works fine as it is,” compared to 24% of the 500 chief executives. Majorities of both groups agreed capitalism “would benefit from some tweaking to better serve society.”
You can take the poll here. More news below.
Alan Murray @alansmurray alan.murray@fortune.com
Top News
Huawei Vendors
The Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite fell today by 1.36% and 1.65% respectively, following news that Japan’s Panasonic had become the latest Huawei vendor to suspend work with the Chinese firm. The Nikkei was down 0.6%. European markets also fell, and you can expect the same to happen in the U.S. today. Guardian
T-Mobile and Sprint
The DOJ’s antitrust division could be set to clash with the White House over T-Mobile’s proposed Sprint takeover. The White House backs the $26 billion deal, but the competition regulators reportedly believe consumers will suffer, and Fox Business is reporting they want the DOJ to sue to block the deal. Fox Business
Trump vs. Pelosi
So how are the bipartisan efforts around U.S. infrastructure going? Not great—President Trump stormed out of a meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer yesterday, saying he can’t work with them on infrastructure while Congressional Democrats are investigating him. So don’t hold your breath for the White House turning its legislative agenda into reality anytime soon. Wall Street Journal
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing told disgruntled shareholders this morning that the bank is about to see “tough cutbacks.” He didn’t give much in the way of detail, but he implied cuts at the bank’s loss-making U.S. equities business. Financial Times
Around the Water Cooler
Amazon Face
Civil liberties groups backed two non-binding proposals at Amazon’s shareholder meeting yesterday that would have forced the company to stop selling facial recognition systems to governments unless it could be sure the tech wouldn’t be used to violate civil liberties. The resolutions failed resoundingly. Research shows that facial recognition technology disproportionately misidentifies women and people with dark skin. Reuters
Greek Debt
When Greece restructured its public debt in 2012, 85.8% of its creditors agreed to take a haircut in the bailout. Some of the rest were deeply unhappy about their losses, and launched a case against the European Central Bank, which supported the restructuring. This morning, the EU General Court ruled against the complaining creditors, saying the “public interest objective of ensuring the stability of the Euro-zone banking system as a whole” outweighed their property rights. Reuters
Yanis Varoufakis
Fortune‘s Vivienne Walt interviewed the charismatic former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who these days has a party, DiEM25, that’s running in 11 countries in this week’s European elections. Varoufakis says only Europe-wide solutions will fix problems such as stagnation, inequality and high unemployment. But he realizes voters won’t go for a federal Europe just yet. Fortune
Fortune Audio
Have you checked out the Fortune 500 Daily audio briefing yet? It’s a two-minute download of F500 company factoids, and you can listen on Spotify, Amazon Alexa, Apple iTunes, and Google Play.
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer. Find previous editions here, and sign up for other Fortune newsletters here.
