- In today’s CEO Daily: Ron O’Hanley talks the Iran war, AI, and how global investment opportunities are changing
- The big leadership story: eBay vs. GameStop
- The markets: Global markets pull back slightly even as S&P 500 futures tick upwards
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. If you want to understand where global capital is flowing—and why—listen to Ron O’Hanley. As chairman and CEO of State Street, he leads a global financial institution that safeguards and services more than $54 trillion in client assets and manages $5.6 trillion through its investment management business. I caught up with O’Hanley at the Milken Institute Global Conference this week to get his take on issues weighing on investors:
The Iran war: O’Hanley says the war is triggering a realignment of capital flows, especially with the $3.2 trillion that the Gulf states and sovereign wealth funds have deployed. “They’re ripping angry at [Iran] and they’re quite concerned about the rhetoric coming out of the U.S. because the only thing worse than the situation now would be a failed state with 90-plus million people. We haven’t seen anything like it elsewhere in the world,” he told me. “I personally worry about what happens if this goes on much longer. It’s the second-order products that don’t get the headlines…Fertilizer is a big one. The people I talk to on this, their fingers crossed, feel like the world will get through this year because a lot of the fertilizer was already in the supply chain. But you could have a [crisis] situation during next year’s planting season, largely outside the U.S.”
Tech’s winners and losers: “AI is taking away tasks, not jobs. If you want to put it in baseball terms, we’re in the first inning in terms of how you take advantage of this technology and deploy it. It’s still a toss-up whether the incumbents are going to win or the new entities. Incumbents have a lot of reasons to win—because of data, the moat, and the relationships,” he said. And he argues the spotlight on digital assets is misplaced. “Crypto gets all the attention but what’s going to be more meaningful is just the digitalization of assets—whether it’s money market funds, tokenization of them, the ability to actually take a piece of property, tokenize it, and enable on the blockchain…and enable the investment in it—not just the initial investment, but more importantly, the secondary market for these assets.”
Global investment opportunities: While Europe’s fiscal priorities are forcing a retreat from global capital markets—”There’s a huge incremental chunk now that’s going to have to go into defense, resilience, rebuilding…you’ll see those countries be a less significant player on the global capital export stage.”—new markets are emerging. Said O’Hanley: “As economies go from saving economies to investing economies, that’s when we will move in, when there’s the operational infrastructure, the technology infrastructure, the ability to create a fund that locals can invest in…We’ve articulated our purpose: to help the world’s global investors achieve better outcomes for the people they serve. I hate the term ‘to run money.’ There’s actually a larger purpose.”
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
eBay bans account of GameStop CEO
eBay banned GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen's account after he began listing baseball cards and GameStop merchandise on the platform to fund his $56 billion unsolicited bid to buy the e-commerce giant. "I'm selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay," Cohen had posted on X, less than 10 hours before his account was gone.
A16z pushes back on “AI job apocalypse”
In an essay published this week, Andreessen Horowitz general partner David George said the idea that AI will lead to widespread job losses is a "complete fantasy." He argued that lower costs don't shrink economic activity but instead expand it, creating new industries and jobs that didn't exist before.
A week of fast food earnings
McDonald's reported comparable sales gains that outpace most fast-food rivals, but CFO Ian Borden told analysts the company is still losing its lowest-income customers. The results reflect a widening split in the industry: chains like Taco Bell with value baked into their identity are winning, while those reacting with discounts are not.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are up 0.4% this morning. The last session closed down 0.4%. South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.1%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.2%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is down 0.9%. India’s NIFTY 50 is currently down 0.7%, while the STOXX Europe 600 is down 0.8% in early trading. Bitcoin fell to just under $80,000.
Around the watercooler
Indosat CEO Vikram Sinha is building an AI for Indonesia’s local languages. Can he make a business case for sovereignty? by Nicholas Gordon
Tapestry thinks it’s cracked the code of ‘expressive luxury’ for Gen Z: a ‘Goldilocks’ combo of aspirational and approachable by Nick Lichtenberg
Elon Musk called Anthropic ‘evil’ 3 months ago. Now he’s taking $4 billion to become its data landlord by Eva Roytburg
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison says a wave of token theft is wreaking havoc on the AI economy by Jeff John Roberts
Gen Z just broke the streaming model: A majority subscribe, binge, and cancel over and over, study finds by Jake Angelo
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.
