The objective is to put together 290 satellites and the associated ground infrastructure. The independent network should be up and running by 2030. Governments will be the first users, but commercial applications are also part of the program.

IRIS2, launched in November 2022 by former European Commissioner Thierry Breton, is expensive. It was valued initially at €6 billion, but experts nowadays estimate that it’s a €12 billion project. Robert Habeck, Germany’s Vice Chancellor, sent a letter to Brussels in March denouncing it as an “exorbitant” increase. The fact that German companies were not heavily involved in the project didn’t help. Still, the war in Ukraine convinced European leaders that they needed their own secure satellite internet network, and they found a compromise. What if their ground system suddenly failed? What would happen if there was a cyberattack? IRIS2 and its 290 satellites are much smaller than the 6,000 active Starlink satellites but the constellation is a strong communication tool. It reaffirms the old continent independence, like Galileo the global navigation satellite system which is the European answer to the American GPS.  

The European Commission carefully avoided numbers. It didn’t say what will be the final cost. SpaceRISE is a private public partnership that will be supported by EU funding and the European Space Agency. They initially budgeted more than €3 billion. The public contribution will likely exceed that amount. The rest will be covered by the private sector, including the three members of the consortium.

According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, there are 340,000 fewer CPAs than five years ago. It is becoming increasingly difficult to do the job expected. Some companies, such as Advanced Auto Parts and Tupperware, failed to file financial reports on time simply because they didn’t have enough accountants.

“We have a brewing crisis,” says Paul Knopp, KPMG US chair, one of the most vocal advocates for change. PwC and EY recently admitted in CFO Dive’s newsletter that they also supported “alternative pathways.”

The Big Four are cautious. They fear states could create a patchwork of varied new rules that would prevent their accountants from working across state lines. Right now, the AICPA’s proposal is out and open to comments. The finalized framework should be ready by February 2025 and help state boards with possible regulation changes. Several states, such as California, are already pressing ahead. Their board of accountancy is drafting legislation permitting work experience to replace one year of expensive schooling. The new law would also preserve serving clients in other states. The board just needs to find a state senator to champion its initiative.

Each iconic brand was seen as a disruptive innovator in its time. Since its founding in 1886, beauty specialist Avon has relied on its “ladies” to sell to their families, friends and neighbors.

The success of the resealable containers invented by Earl Tupper in the mid-1940s relies on the same sales strategy. A single mother, Brownie Wise, in charge of marketing, had the idea to organize Tupperware parties with friends. Once again, many women embraced the direct-selling model.

Nevertheless, the magic eventually stopped working. “Consumers now buy three-fourths of their homewares in shops and 20% online,” said Brian Fox, Tupperware’s chief restructuring officer, in the bankruptcy filing.

Tupperware “was late to the party when it came to modern consumers,” he added. First, the company’s patents expired in the 1980s, letting rival products from Ziploc, Rubbermaid, and Pyrex enter the market. Then came the e-commerce revolution. Women no longer have to attend a party to discover new products; they just need a computer. Avon Products, which became a subsidiary of the Brazilian brand Natura, faces the same dilemma after a series of sales and reorganizations. Walmart, Target and Amazon offer convenience and a wider selection of beauty products. Younger consumers, meanwhile, are flocking to Instagram-friendly brands. Influencers have replaced the “ladies,” and the old disruptors are paying the price. In its bankruptcy filing, API declared more than $1 billion in debt; Tupperware $1.2 billion. No more ding, dong—now it’s click, click.  

Artificial intelligence consumes so much electricity that market intelligence firm International Data Corporation estimates data center consumption to double between 2023 and 2028, reaching 857 terawatt hours by 2028. Thus, demand for nuclear power is growing, reversing a strong downward trend.

Since 2013, 12 US nuclear plants have shuttered, but lately, their reopening has been in the news. Constellation Energy, the owner of Three Mile Island, reached an agreement with Microsoft to restart one of its dormant reactors that the meltdown did not affect. Constellation will invest $1.6 billion in the project, and Microsoft agreed to buy its electricity for 20 years.

The Three Mile Island deal follows a series of other pacts. Microsoft has signed with Ontario Power Generation in Canada and agreed to work with Helion, a nuclear fusion startup.

Amazon is also securing its electricity pipeline. In March, the giant paid $650 million for data centers that draw power from Pennsylvania’s 2.5-gigawatt Susquehanna nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, data center operator Equinix is betting its future on small modular reactors (SMRs). Earlier this year, the company signed a letter of intent to purchase power from Oklo, a Californian nuclear fusion startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The new partners didn’t reveal where the powerhouses would be built. They only said that SMRs would generate up to 15 megawatts of power and operate for over a decade without refueling. The SMR technology is the new frontier goal. Oracle plans to build a data center campus with three SMRs. When and where? The company didn’t give any further detail.

Ever since that presidential requirement, several agencies—including the Department of Transportation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—have complied, and many more are coming.

The US private sector is likewise on the move. In December 2023, David Mathison organized the first-ever chief AI officer summit and is planning a second meeting on October 2.

According to the tech specialist Foundry’s 2023 study, 11% of midsize to large companies have already designated a CAIO and 21% are actively seeking one. Financial institutions and the health-care industry are at the forefront of the race to find those rare technical experts with insight into ethics and regulatory compliance. The Cleveland Clinic and UC Davis Health already have their CAIOs. For them, AI promises improved patient care without neglecting safety, data security regulation, and more.

The new executives have a broad remit. They must successfully deploy AI within their companies, improve the workforce’s productivity, identify new revenue streams and recognize ethical and security risks. They should also be knowledgeable about talent gaps, create robust learning programs to upskill employees and measure the efficiency of AI’s adoption. “It is a full-time job,” warns a KPMG study that is “leading the charge on AI.”

If the company lets the technology officer or the CEO occasionally supervise the AI revolution, multiple fragmented projects could emerge. Most executives agree that a single strategic coordinator will be needed to make the hard choices. KPMG created a CAIO position in October 2023. Morgan Stanley, Intel, Dell, SAP and Levi’s all have a new C in their organizational charts. In Europe, Accenture and advertising giant WPP followed the same path.

In the US, the world’s largest economy, more corporations went under in the first half of 2024 than in any comparable period since 2010. In total, 346 companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence.

Small and midsize businesses, especially those in the consumer discretionary sector, were the most impacted. Customers, now more careful about their spending, have cut back on restaurants, clothing, and car purchases.

Thus, many eyes have been on BurgerFi International as an example. BurgerFi is a popular Floridian burger and pizza chain, which in April defaulted on senior debt owed to TREW Capital Management. This past summer, three board directors resigned and the remaining directors hired Jeremy Rosenthal, a bankruptcy specialist, as chief restructuring officer.

Will he pull BurgerFi back from the brink, or not? The company anticipates an $18.4 million loss for the quarter ended July 1. Last month, TREW tossed BurgerFi a lifeline in the form of a $2.5 million protective advance on the understanding that the chain would find a way to make good on its obligations.

European companies haven’t fared much better than their US counterparts.

Germany, the biggest economy in the European Union, is suffering; corporate insolvencies during the first quarter rose 26.5% compared with the same period in 2023, according to Destatis, the federal statistical office. France is also stumbling. The CNAJMJ, representing legal authorities, reports that the number of companies bankrupted grew 18% during the first half compared with the first six months of 2023. Neither has Japan been spared. Taikoku Databank lists 74 bankruptcies among century-old companies in the first six months of this year, the largest number for comparable periods going back to 2000. As in the US and France, experts chalk up the rise in Japanese insolvencies to tepid consumer demand, rising costs, and higher interest rates that make it difficult for businesses to borrow.

The traditional partnership structure has reached its limits: It is capital-constrained. Much of the profits go back to partners each year, and the company has retirement obligations for former partners. At the same time, accounting firms must heavily invest in artificial intelligence tools to deepen their consulting business and grow profits.

Sensing opportunities for consolidation, private equity (PE) firms have purchased shares in five of the top 26 US accounting firms in recent years. Tower Brook Capital invested in advisory and accounting expert EisnerAmper. New Mountain Capital took an interest in Citrin Cooperman, and Parthenon Capital got involved with Cherry Bekaert.

In February 2024, Baker Tilly US signed a $1 billion deal with Hellman & Friedman and Valeas Capital Partners. Shortly thereafter, the American branch of Grant Thornton, the world’s seventh-largest accounting firm, announced an investment by New Mountain Capital. These financial alliances have proven beneficial, as seen in the case of Citrin Cooperman, which has completed 17 acquisitions since New Mountain Capital’s capital injection, to become a $600 million powerhouse.   PE firms’ appetite for accounting firms is not limited to the US. It has a global reach, as seen in the UK, where Hg and PAI Partners are now shareholders in Azets, one of the top 10 UK accounting firms. Azets, in turn, has acquired 90 local providers. Waterland Private Equity took stakes in two other UK accounting firms, Moore Kingston Smith and Cooper Parry

Nevertheless, Alphabet didn’t have many close competitors from which to poach good candidates, so CEO Sundar Pichai had to expand his search beyond the well-known frontiers of the tech mecca.

Ashkenazi served Lilly in a variety of finance and operations roles, including as CFO for the past three years, making a name for her role in the success of popular new drugs including the diabetes treatment Mounjaro and the weight-loss drug Zepbound.

Her challenge was not to market the drugs but to manufacture enough of them to meet an exploding demand. Wall Street approved; during her stint as CFO, Lilly shares jumped 300% and the company reached a market cap of more than $800 billion. 

That’s what made Ashkenazi attractive to Pichai.

“She has a track record of strategic focus on long-term investment to fuel innovation and growth,” he said in a statement.

She arrives at a critical time for Alphabet. In an internal memo, management recently informed employees that there would be restructuring, with possible layoffs, as Google positions itself for the next wave of innovation in artificial intelligence. The new CFO will by investing billions in AI to compete with Microsoft and Amazon, but must do so selectively, allocating capital across competing projects. That’s where Ashkenazi’s experience in weight-loss drug navigation comes in handy. To snatch her from Lilly, Pichai offered three big incentives: a close to $10 million signing bonus, an equity grant of $13 million, and future annual bonuses that could skyrocket to 200% of her base salary.

Clothing retailer Gap is also freshening up. Its new CEO, Richard Dickson, arrived in 2023. At one of its department store competitors, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette handed over the keys to Tony Spring in March.

Those departing executives are not outliers. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 622 CEOs announced during the first quarter of 2024 that they would soon quit. It was the highest quarterly total on record. The number of executives leaving increased by 50% compared to the first quarter of last year, and 2023 was already a record year. The executive search firm Russell Reynolds calculated that 1,914 American CEOs left last year, a 55% increase compared with 2022.

Why are they heading for the exit? Many baby boomers are simply retiring: 21% of all departures are justified by old age. Furthermore, women leave relatively more frequently than their male counterparts. Of the departing CEOs, 20% were women who didn’t feel supported, saying they suffered from a lack of flexibility and not enough resources.

Growing challenges may also explain this executive turnover. During turmoil such as the Covid-19 pandemic, board directors tend to favor a well-known existing CEO. When the crisis diminishes, directors become bolder and more demanding, thus riskier for  CEOs, who could lose their position.

Executive search firm Cowen Partners underlines the new challenges. The top honcho must deal with inflation, supply chain disruptions, ever-evolving technology tools, partly remote employees unfamiliar with the corporate culture, customers interested in environmental, social and governance scores and a growing to-do list. CEOs could suffer burnout. According to executive consultancy Equilar, the median tenure among CEOs of S&P 500 companies is shrinking. It was six years in 2013 and 4.8 years in 2022.    

Sherry House, 52, who becomes Ford’s vice president of finance on June 3, joins from Lucid Motors, where she spent three years helping to deploy its first luxury electric vehicle. John Lawler, Ford’s current CFO, who has been promoted to vice chair, will chaperone House in transitioning to the CFO role in 2025.

The move from a startup to one of Detroit’s Big Three is a surprise, but it demonstrates Ford’s determination to become an EV player. Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO, has admitted publicly in quarterly earning presentations that the EV segment has been the “main drag on the company”; he expects to finish 2024 with a loss of more than $5 billion in the EV division.

Ford needs “urgently to build a profitable EV business and generate new and recurring revenue streams,” Farley said in introducing House.

The future CFO arrives as an outsider, but not altogether. She was instrumental in Lucid’s launch as a publicly traded company, and she previously spent several years at Waymo, Alphabet’s driverless technology subsidiary. Nevertheless, in returning to Michigan, she claims to come back to her family roots; her grandfather was a tool and die maker at Ford and she earlier worked at supplier Visteon and at General Motors.

She will face numerous challenges finding a path to profitability in EVs for Ford, however, including navigating price cuts, Chinese competition, environmental initiatives, lack of charging infrastructure across the US, and short-term tepid demand for EVs. And outsiders’ reception can be brutal in the auto industry. Tim Stone, who joined Ford in as CFO from SNAP in 2019, only lasted 18 months before switching to a software company.