Good morning.
Big week ahead. The President is in Singapore, where he will meet with Kim Jong-un. The outcome is anyone’s guess. A judge will decide Tuesday whether AT&T can buy Time Warner—a decision that could trigger a complete remake of the entertainment business. The World Cup kicks off in Russia Thursday, without the U.S. Present. (If you want to learn more about how Russia stole the tournament, look here.) And the Fed will be meeting in Washington Tuesday and Wednesday—the only one of the big four events that has a predictable outcome: another bump in interest rates.
Meanwhile at Coins2Day, we are finalizing preparations for our CEO Initiative meeting in San Francisco June 25-26. This is our effort to build a community of business leaders committed to showing they can address social problems as part of their profit-making activity. Among those participating: Apple’s Tim Cook, Delta’s Ed Bastian, Deloitte’s Cathy Englebert, Synchrony’s Margaret Keane, Intel’s Brian Krzanich, and Genpact CEO Tiger Tyagarajan, to name a few. The group also will be hearing from Kleiner Perkins Chairman John Doerr, whose book Measure What Matters has hit the bestseller lists; Steven Pinker, whose book Enlightenment Now has sparked a lively conversation about progress (I’d argue these CEOs represent a last bastion of enlightenment thinking); and Bryan Stevenson, who runs the Equal Justice Initiative and helped Starbucks plan its racial bias training sessions.
We’ve kept the group relatively small, to allow for meaningful collaboration among the CEOs. But there’s still room for one or two more. If you are interested, shoot me a note, or go here.
I’m in Orlando this week, where I’m getting a mind-body-spirit check-up at Johnson & Johnson’s Human Performance Institute. I’ll provide an update on the experience tomorrow. More news below.
| Alan Murray | |
| @alansmurray | |
| [email protected] |
Top News
Blame Canada
The G7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada, was a disaster. President Donald Trump, having agreed to sign a watered-down joint statement, changed his mind on the plane to Singapore after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Trump's claim that Canadian steel poses a national security threat to the U.S. Was "kind of insulting." Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro: "There is a special place in hell for any leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door and that's what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference." The Star
Italian Commitment
The euro is up after the new Italian finance minister, Giovanni Tria, said the country would remain committed to it. This has been one of the big worries around Italy's new, populist government—elements within the coalition have previously been very skeptical about the European common currency, to say the least. Italian bonds are up too, and stocks are heading for their biggest gains since February. Bloomberg
Net Neutrality
Net neutrality is now officially dead in the U.S., at least at the federal level. So what happens now? The big questions are: 1) Do carriers invest enough in their networks to make the point moot, by guaranteeing enough capacity for everyone? 2) Failing that, do they treat services that rival their own in a fair way? 3) Failing that, will the FTC have the capacity of its own, and the regulatory tools, to crack down on anticompetitive practices? Coins2Day
KKR Envision
Private equity firm KKR is reportedly close to buying Envision Healthcare—a provider of services for doctors—for around $5.5 billion, although if you include debt then the deal is worth $10 billion or so. This would make it one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in recent years. Envision has been performing poorly recently, and KKR is on a buying spree. Wall Street Journal
Around the Water Cooler
Bitcoin Tumble
Bitcoin took a tumble of over 7% yesterday after a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange called Coinrail said it had been the victim of an online heist. Hackers made away with around 30% of the virtual coins that Coinrail was holding, the exchange said, announcing a suspension of trading. Even though those virtual coins weren't actually Bitcoin, but lesser-known cryptocurrencies, the market is as always very sensitive to new developments. CNN
North Korea
Although China has stayed out of direct involvement in U.S.-North Korean talks, Chinese analysts are saying that Beijing will likely play "guarantor" in any deal that Trump and Kim strike tomorrow—guarantor of the denuclearization that Trump wants, and of the safety that Kim wants. Of note: Kim arrived in Singapore on an Air China 747, not on the creaky, Soviet "Air Force Un." South China Morning Post
Inspired Protectionism
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said today that small, developing nations are justified in implementing protectionist policies because they need "privileges" when dealing with larger countries. "When the world today talks about free trade, it is quite obvious that even the developed countries find that free trade is not so acceptable, especially now in America, where it is actually indulging in protected trade," he said. CNBC
Tech Limits
Tech executives are acutely aware of the ways in which too much tech can disserve kids, so they tend to limit the screen time their own children get. NBC has a piece covering the executives' top tips, with a common theme being only allowing (limited) device usage after the child has read books, done their homework and so on. Some don't allow any screen time at all, though, as "it's unrealistic to expect children to limit themselves." NBC
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer. Find previous editions here, and sign up for other Coins2Day newsletters here.
