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Good morning.<\/strong> If you thought geopolitical risk was fading from your strategic planning picture, think again. The U.S.\u2013Iran war escalated over the weekend, and crude prices are already reacting. Here\u2019s what leaders need to be watching.<\/p>\n Energy prices are likely to surge again.<\/strong> Global oil demand is down, mainly because of China and other Asian countries. But U.S. consumption is up, despite pump prices that are about 50% higher than before the Iran war. Some shipping routes remain open in the Strait of Hormuz but few ships are likely to use them right now. With nearly 1 billion barrels of global petroleum reserves now depleted and Trump\u2019s declaration that the peace deal is over, energy analysts tell my colleague Jordan Blum that prices are likely to settle closer to $90 per barrel and possibly go as high as $200.<\/p>\n Consumers\u2013and voters\u2013could be coming for you.<\/strong> Americans tend to conflate what they pay at the pump with broader energy prices that include electricity, natural gas and renewables. Overall energy prices impact public opinion in other ways. The energy consumption of data centers is one reason why American consumers hate AI. They\u2019re taking a closer look at who\u2019s profiting amid their pain. Last year, 51 electric and gas utility companies in the U.S. paid their CEOs a collective $626 million, according to an analysis published by the Energy and Policy Institute, which is a $100 million increase from 2024. Such realities could sway the policy debate in a key election year.<\/p>\n There are no easy answers to inflation.<\/strong> The U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran came at a time when business leaders were already struggling to adjust sourcing, supply chains and policies to tariffs and retaliatory trade policies. It\u2019s another ingredient in a recipe that\u2019s keeping prices high. The Fed isn\u2019t happy with the trend. Companies are hiking prices, hoping customers will continue to buy. U.S. home prices have hit an all-time high, despite falling prices on the West Coast. That\u2019s putting more pressure on CEOs to cut costs, especially in areas like labor, but AI is too expensive to replace humans in most jobs right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n CEOs are on alert. <\/strong>Iran isn\u2019t just threatening revenge on Trump; The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iran-linked threat actors are targeting U.S. companies, especially in tech and critical infrastructure. Leaders face the challenges of staying abreast of government warnings on the latest threats, and making sure employees are up to date on cybersecurity training. Yet they have to balance those factors without overindexing on fear about traveling to places like the Middle East as travel advisories have eased and most of the region is getting back to normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/em><\/p>\n Ulta\u2019s $400 million bet\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Ulta is opening a four-story <\/span>Times Square flagship<\/span> in late 2027, betting a $400 million, 15-year lease will make the store a high-profile branding and marketing showcase. The move is meant to help the beauty chain compete with Sephora and test whether expensive flagship retail still works.<\/span><\/p>\n James Murdoch\u2019s SpaceX windfall<\/b><\/p>\n James Murdoch, the<\/span> estranged 53-year-old son of Rupert Murdoch, invested an estimated $120 million in Elon Musk\u2019s rocket company before it went public this year in the biggest IPO in history. The holding could now be worth <\/span>as much as $7.5 billion<\/span>, according to calculations by Pitchbook\u2019s Franco Granda.<\/span><\/p>\n The nightmare Hormuz scenario<\/b><\/p>\n Nearly 1 billion barrels of worldwide petroleum reserves are now depleted and not being replenished. At the same time, mothballed refineries have yet to come back online, China still hasn\u2019t resumed importing large oil volumes, and President Donald Trump has declared the interim peace deal \u201cover\u201d amid new drone and rocket exchanges. That means the Strait of Hormuz is <\/span>unlikely to return to its normal<\/span> volumes for many months.<\/span><\/p>\n S&P 500<\/b> futures are down 0.31% this morning. The last session closed up 0.42%. <\/span>The<\/b> STOXX Europe 600<\/b> was down 0.15% in early trading. <\/span>The U.K.\u2019s FTSE 100<\/b> was flat in early trading.<\/span> Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 <\/b>was down 1.92%.<\/span> South Korea\u2019s KOSPI <\/b>was<\/span> down 8.95%. <\/span>China\u2019s CSI 300 <\/b>was down 1.79%.<\/span> Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng<\/b> was up 0.16%.<\/span> India\u2019s NIFTY 50 <\/b>was down 0.02%. <\/span>Bitcoin<\/b> was at $63K.<\/span><\/p>\n A Trump Account could make your kid a millionaire by 45\u2014but financial experts say the app\u2019s projections come with a catch<\/span> by Sydney Lake<\/span><\/p>\n A Yale professor says America is now an \u2018oldigarchy\u2019\u2014and Boomers on LinkedIn are enraged<\/span> by<\/span> Nick Lichtenberg<\/span><\/p>\n More tech workers are retiring early because they don\u2019t want to deal with AI-related changes: \u2018Many people believe it\u2019s overblown\u2019<\/span> by<\/span> Sasha Rogelberg<\/span><\/p>\n How SK Hynix just pulled off the second-largest U.S. share sale by quietly powering the AI boom<\/span> by Nicholas Gordon<\/span><\/p>\n CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #escalating #U.S.Iran #war #rewriting #CEO #playbook<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good morning. If you thought geopolitical risk was fading from your strategic planning picture, think again. The U.S.\u2013Iran war escalated over the weekend, and crude prices are already reacting. Here\u2019s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[369,1411,3640,2114,8859,3894,446],"class_list":["post-11959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-ceo","tag-ceo-daily","tag-escalating","tag-playbook","tag-rewriting","tag-u-s-iran","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\nTop leadership news<\/h3>\n
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