Good morning.

I had no idea I was making a controversial statement Monday when I wrote that Satya Nadella deserved his $42 million salary, given the value he’s created at Microsoft. “The comparison with sports figures…is plain wrong. We should not pay executives like divas,” J.S. wrote in. “It’s a false truth that all of a company’s increase (or decrease) in value is attributable to the CEO,” wrote M.G.

To be fair, I didn’t say ALL of Microsoft’s $700 billion increase in value was attributable to Nadella; but I did say a significant chunk of it was. And listening yesterday to Microsoft U.S. President Kate Johnson speak at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women NextGen Summit only reinforced my view. Microsoft’s soaring value is directly attributable to a culture change driven by the CEO.

At the core of that change, Johnson said, was empathy: “When he took over almost six years ago, he saw the company on the brink of obsolescence. He saw that not only did we need to play in this cloud market, but we were going to have to very quickly change so many things to fulfill this mission. I don’t think empathy was at the core of our old culture. We were the ‘know it alls.’ We wanted to become the ‘learn it alls.’”

Under Nadella, says Johnson, the company “completely opened the Microsoft ecosystem. We want to meet our customers wherever they are on whatever device they want in whatever ecosystem they want.” That’s a big change from the old Microsoft, where visitors were advised to leave their iPads at the door.

That kind of culture change at a massive company could only have been accomplished by an extraordinary leader. I’ll match his achievements against LeBron, Federer and Messi any day. Leadership matters.

Other highlights of day one of the Next Gen summit:

“We changed the vocabulary around recruiting. We used to talk about whether the candidate was aggressive enough to do the job. We removed this word from our recruiting vocabulary six years ago. I don’t know what ‘aggressive’ means other than obnoxious.” Instead, “the questions we ask now are: are you intellectually curious, are you assertive when you form a view, do you have an insatiable desire to learn, and can you articulate your view with training?”
—Rana Yared, partner, Goldman Sachs

“There is no such thing as over-communication.”
—Sigal Cordero, Vice President of the urban mobility program at General Motors

“There are great waves in China.”
—Professional Surfer Jessi Miley-Dyer, on giving female surfers equal pay and the opportunity to compete in China.

More coverage from NextGen here. More news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

Aramco IPO

Saudi Aramco's long-awaited, record-breaking stock market listing went well this morning, quickly hitting the daily limit of a 10% rise (from the initial 32 Saudi riyals, or $8.53, up to 35.2 riyals.) Aramco's $1.88 trillion day-one valuation beat the $1.7 trillion announced at the time of share pricing last week, but still comes in below the original target. CNBC

USMCA Deal

President Trump and House Democrats have struck a deal on the revised United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will delay the pact's further passage until after Trump's impeachment trial ends in the Senate. The Senate impeachment trial won't even begin until after the holidays, McConnell said. USA Today

Exxon Victory

Exxon has successfully defended itself against fraud claims brought by the New York attorney general, who had claimed the oil giant deceived investors over the future cost of climate-change regulation. New York State Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager said the AG had failed to prove its case, but added: "Nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve Exxon Mobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases in the production of its fossil fuel products." Wall Street Journal

Huawei 5G

Huawei will (alongside Nokia) be a supplier to the 5G network of Telefonica Deutschland, the German arm of the Spanish telecoms giant. So much for U.S. pressure to steer clear of the Chinese giant over alleged security risks. Germany is yet to finalize its security rules around 5G equipment suppliers. Reuters

AROUND THE WATER COOLER

Wirecard Allegations

The Financial Times has an extraordinary piece today that alleges a former Libyan intelligence chief funded a London surveillance operation in the hope of finding evidence that market speculators were trying to manipulate shares in Wirecard, the contentious German payments group. The former spy, Rami El Obeidi, apparently claimed he was a Wirecard shareholder, but Wirecard denies having anything to do with the surveillance. Targets included hedge fund manager (and big Brexit backer) Crispin Odey. FT

U.K. Election

The U.K.'s general election tomorrow will most likely be decided on Brexit, but that's not the only issue at play that will have major consequences for businesses operating in the country. Here's a rundown of some of the other promises being bandied about by the major parties, regarding issues like corporate tax and the future of tech regulation. Fortune

Tesla Europe

Tesla's new gigafactory outside Berlin will reportedly churn out 500,000 Model 3 and Model Y cars a year, with 10,000 jobs being created. That's according to Bild, which previously reported projected output of 150,000 cars a year. The plant is said to cost up to $4.4 billion. Reuters

Deal Hopes

Some analysts are hopeful that there will be an "eleventh hour" U.S.-China trade deal before Sunday, the day on which new tariffs kick in. Both sides of the negotiations are reportedly working to stave off the tariffs, which would involve an extra 15% on around $160 billion in Chinese exports to the U.S. CNBC

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.