Tariff-proof pay: How boardrooms quietly made sure Trump’s trade war stopped at the CEO’s door |
Tariff-proof pay: How boardrooms quietly made sure Trump’s trade war stopped at the CEO’s door
Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:
Markets: Oil up (again), stocks all over the place.
Exclusive: CEOs got millions after boards ‘neutralized’ the impact of tariffs on exec comp.
Exclusive: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang heralds new era of productivity powered by AI.
Exclusive: AWS chief Matt Garman sees “massive change” ahead.
Musk in OpenAI case: AI “could kill us all.”
Trump signals blockade of Iran will continue for the long term.
Facial recognition cameras at Disney.
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Stocks are mixed in reaction to yet another oil price spike
S&P 500 futures were flat this morning. The index sank 0.49% yesterday.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 declined 0.35% in early trading and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.65% before lunch.
Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI was up 0.75%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.02%. India’s Nifty 50 was up 0.8%. China’s CSI 300 was up 1.1%.
Brent crude was $112 per barrel this morning, up from $111 the day before.
It has been two months since the start of the war—here’s how asset markets performed in that time.
“Unsurprisingly, oil is beating everything, and Brent 1-month contracts are up 49%. However, investors are still expecting this to be a temporary shock, as the 6-month Brent contract is ‘only’ up 25%. US assets have outperformed, reflecting that the US is more insulated from the shock as a net energy exporter,” says Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid.
CEOs got millions after boards ‘neutralized’ the impact of tariffs on executive comp
Among 22 large public companies with significant exposure to Trump’s import tariffs, eight boards shielded their top executives’ pay from the negative effects of those tariffs on company performance, according to an exclusive analysis released on Wednesday by executive pay consulting firm Compensation Advisory Partners. RTX CEO, Christopher Calio, for instance, collected $27.7 million in compensation last year, after the aerospace and defense giant’s board decided the trade war wouldn’t touch his bonus. Fortune’s Amanda Gerut has the details here.
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