Good morning. It’s clear that Linda Yaccarino was taking on a tough assignment when she became CEO of Twitter, now known as X, about two years ago. Her boss Elon Musk tweeted about a female CEO coming on board his newly acquired company before she’d even given her notice at NBC Universal.
“In reality, she will only ever be the Twitter COO for Musk; at worst, Musk’s executive PA,” my colleague Lila MacLellan quoted one PR expert as saying, when trouble was brewing a few months into the job.
Certainly Yaccarino is not the first leader to be overshadowed by a powerful boss. I’ve spoken with many over the years, from Jeff Immelt when Jack Welch delayed his exit from GE by a year to work on the Honeywell deal, to former CEOs at brands like Disney and Starbucks where a former boss boomeranged back without ever truly exiting stage left.
I spoke with some experts this week about the unique challenges of being in such situations and how best to handle them. The first step is to set clear expectations and boundaries so that you have an option to leave with your reputation intact, CEO advisors told me.
You try to build trust and may have to tolerate sharing the spotlight with a predecessor who continues to linger down the hall. (A familiar refrain in some family-owned companies.) “It’s okay if the founder has a voice on certain topics. But if everyone still looks to the predecessor for leadership, that’s a problem,” Constantine Alexandrakis, CEO of Russell Reynolds Associates said.
And if it doesn’t work out, either take the money and enjoy the relief or write with a book that lets you write your own history. Though, as one ousted CEO told me recently, “the problem is there’s always a nondisclosure where you can’t set the story straight.”
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top news
Trump wants 35% tariffs on Canada
Canada got one of those letters. There will be an exemption for goods under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Canada said it would continue to negotiate. Countries that have not received one of Trump’s letters will get a rate of 15-20%, the president said.
Bill Ackman soundly beaten in his first pro tennis match
The 59-year-old Pershing Square CEO played a doubles match with four-time Grand Slam champion Jack Sock but the pair was dispatched in 67 minutes by Bernard Tomic and Omar Jasika, 6-1, 7-5. Tennis pros gave it withering reviews. Andy Roddick called for the match to be reviewed, suggesting that Ackman’s opponents deliberately went easy on him.
BCG’s Gaza scandal makes the front page of the WSJ
The bizarre and complicated story of how Boston Consulting Group ended up drafting an analysis of what it would actually take to relocate Palestinians in Gaza and reconstruct the postwar territory saw another development yesterday with the BCG’s chief risk officer, Adam Farber, and the head of its social-impact practice, Rich Hutchinson, being demoted. Two other partners were previously fired. The company denies their work was in any way approved and insiders are baffled as to why they were doing it in the first place.
Jamie Dimon: “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots”
The CEO of JPMorgan had a number of spicy things to say at an event hosted by the Irish foreign ministry. He called NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a “Marxist” and slammed Democrats for being too woke. “I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed.” Details in the NY Post and the FT.
He also had some things to say about Europe …
Dimon warned that Europe is “losing” in terms of economic competitiveness at an event in Ireland on Thursday. “Europe has gone from 90% of U.S. GDP to 65% over 10 or 15 years. That’s not good,” Dimon said.
Tesla finally schedules a shareholder meeting
After much delay, Tesla announced the EV company will hold a shareholder event on November 6 as the question of how much to compensate CEO Elon Musk is considered once again. Meanwhile, Musk continues touting the creation of a new political party amid other controversies.
SEC files against alleged ‘Patriot Economy’ Ponzil scheme
A politically connected Georgia financier has been accused of running a multi-million Ponzi scheme that was helped along through targeted advertisements on right-wing and conservative media channeling the “Patriot Economy.” The SEC alleged in a lawsuit filed on Thursday that Edwin Brant Frost IV and his company First Liberty Building & Loan have been paying investors back for years by soliciting rounds of funds from new investors.
The markets
S&P 500 futures were down 0.57% this morning after the index hit another all-time high yesterday, closing up 0.27% at 6,280. Bitcoin went on a tear and hit another all-time high. It is now above $117K. The VIX fear index was up 6% yesterday. Stoxx Europe 600 sold off 0.79% in early trading this morning. The UK’s FTSE 100 was down 0.38% this morning after hitting an all-time high yesterday. India’s Nifty 50 declined 0.79%. South Korea’s Kospi was off 0.19% this morning. China was widely up.
From the analysts
Macquarie on the Brazil tariffs: “Traders thought that Brazil was ‘marked safe’ from aggressive President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs because the US runs a merchandise trade surplus with Brazil. Yet the US just placed a very aggressive 50% tariff on Brazil’s exports to the US, citing how Brazil’s president was treating his political rivals, among other things. … The action against Brazil sets a scary precedent, insofar as it is the first time that Trump’s tariffs are intended to influence (ostensibly) a country’s internal political and judicial settings,” per Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry.
Pantheon Macroeconomics on the labor market: “We continue to expect the unemployment rate to rise more quickly in the second half of this year than the FOMC expects. Labor demand is continuing to decline; for instance, Indeed’s measure of total job postings has fallen a further 1% in the month to July 4, extending the drop since the end of last year to 5%,” per Samuel Tombs.
Wedbush on Nvidia and Microsoft: “We believe Microsoft will also hit the $4 trillion market cap club this summer and then over the next 18 months the focus will be on the $5 trillion club….as this tech bull market is still early being led by the AI Revolution,” per Daniel Ives et al.
Around the watercooler
Why Mark Zuckerberg’s AI talent spending spree is no guarantee that Meta will catch up to rivals by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian
Bitcoin reaches all-time highs as it surges beyond $113,000 by Leo Schwartz
Is your city a winner or loser in the return-to-office race? Capital Economics breaks it down by Ashley Lutz and Fortune Intelligence
Wall Street’s advice after Nvidia hits historic $4 trillion market cap: BUY by Paolo Confino
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
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