Here is an edited excerpt from this week’s CxO newsletter. To get this to your inbox, sign up here.
With Hunter Biden pleading guilty on tax charges and the jury trial in the Justice Department’s case against former President Donald Trump set to convene on August 14, there’s plenty to talk about in Washington today. While attention is focused on President Biden and Trump, the field for the 2024 campaign to get to the Oval Office is starting to fill up with new contenders.
One Republican who is not running is New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. I spoke with him a few months ago about his take on the GOP agenda and what he’s done in his state. Sununu, for one, is concerned that playing the culture wars could alienate the next generation of voters and keep Republicans out of the White House. “We’ve got an incredible product, especially against a lot of this anti-business, left-wing stuff you see out of Washington, but there’s a lot of folks sitting on the sidelines, ” says Sununu. “You can’t govern if you don’t win.” Here’s the full interview:
Stay tuned as we speak with candidates in coming weeks about their plans to spur entrepreneurship and prosperity while navigating the tricky terrain of a polarized electorate.
Meanwhile, rescuers are racing against time to save the lives of five people on a submersible vessel that went missing on Sunday while en route to see the Titanic wreck. British adventurer Hamish Harding, the founder and chairman of Action Aviation, is among those on board. The Cambridge-educated pilot and entrepreneur has also been on a Blue Origin flight, broken 16 air speed records and joined Buzz Aldrin on an odyssey to the South Pole. Here’s more about his background, and what we know about the others on board.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the vessel had less than 40 hours of oxygen left, according to the U.S. Coast Guard that’s helping to search a section of the ocean the size of Connecticut. For a sense of how fraught this $250,000-a-person journey can be, check out this video with veteran tech journalist David Pogue, who went on the same trip last year.
Another breaking story on our radar: Carlos Ghosn suing his former employer Nissan for $1 billion, claiming libel, defamation and the fabrication of material evidence. Ghosn, you may recall, was arrested in late 2018 over allegations he had understated his annual salary and misused company funds, later orchestrating a dramatic escape from house arrest in Japan that’s become the stuff of Hollywood.
Ghosn filed his lawsuit in Lebanon, where he was raised and currently lives as an international fugitive. While the charges against Ghosn are damning, the case against him is complicated – to say the least. The former auto titan was in charge of a fraying alliance between Nissan and Renault at the time of his arrest, and his lengthy imprisonment without trial raised questions about the fairness of Japan’s legal system.
Here’s some of the other news on our radar:
Alibaba Replaces CEO Ahead Of Split: China’s e-commerce giant replaced Daniel Zhang, its longtime CEO and chair, with Eddie Yongming Wu as it prepares to split into six separate entities. Zhang will lead the cloud unit. Alibaba cofounder and vice-chair Joseph Tsai will take over from Zhang as chair of the board. As with Alphabet (formerly known as Google, now one of its units), Alibaba’s split is intended to appease regulators and unlock value for shareholders. Meanwhile, cofounder and former CEO Jack Ma is stepping back into the spotlight — as a teacher.
Equity Watch: Duke University will offer full tuition grants to undergraduate students from North Carolina and South Carolina whose families earn less than $150,000 this fall. The move comes as colleges and universities await a Supreme Court decision on race-based admissions. While the justices will decide the merits of that case, there’s no doubt that Black Americans continue to struggle from being underbanked, under-appreciated and underserved. McKinsey’s Shelley Stewart gives a compelling argument on why focusing on Black consumers is also good for the bottom line.
U.K. Parliament Revokes Boris Johnson’s Westminster Pass: Imagine you’ve quit your job but your former employer continues to give you access to much of its buildings and catering facilities. We learned this week that former members of parliament are entitled to such privileges after Boris Johnson had them taken away. The former U.K. prime minister could have faced a 90-day suspension as MP, following a report that he lied about hosting parties during the pandemic—but he quit as MP after seeing the report in advance. In the unlikely event that he was planning to visit the House of Commons, he’ll now have to clear the same hurdles as everyone else.
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