C-Suite
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‘I lost more money than anybody in the history of capitalism!’: Remembering Ted Turner
Ted Turner, who died this Wednesday at 87, didn’t do anything halfway. In October of 2006, I got to spend a memorable evening alongside Ted Turner at the opening of his Ted’s Montana Grill Restaurant in midtown Manhattan. I was invited as a “plus-one” by close friend and fellow Fortune writer Pattie Sellers, who’d profiled…
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‘If he tells you he can beat me, I’ll sue!’: Inside the $9 billion friendship between the CEOs of Amex and Delta
One of the biggest successes in credit card history was cemented over a giant steak. It was early in COVID and American Express CEO Stephen Squeri—who had unexpectedly been named to the top job in 2016 (read the story of how, here)—was meeting with Delta CEO Ed Bastian in Atlanta to talk through the terms…
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eBay bans GameStop CEO’s account after he started listing store signs and old carpets to fund his $56 billion offer to buy the marketplace
Apparently every dollar counts in GameStop’s $56 billion effort to acquire eBay. GameStop’s CEO, Ryan Cohen, already has a $20 billion financing commitmentfrom TD Bank to put toward the acquisition, but questions remain about how the rest of the deal will be funded given GameStop’s market cap is only about $11 billion. On Wednesday, Cohen…
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At 75, Ted Turner told Fortune he gave himself 5 more years. He got 12—and spent them warning the world was ending
Ted Turner was never one to soften a forecast, even when the subject was himself. “At 75, how much longer will I live? Till 80 maybe?” the CNN founder told Fortune‘s Pattie Sellers in a wide-ranging 2013 interview marking his 75th birthday. When Sellers pushed back—why not 90?—Turner allowed it was “a possibility,” but said…
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Inside Home Depot’s marketing playbook: weather signals, influencers, and an app to drive bigger baskets
Molly Battin, Home Depot’s chief marketing officer, oversees far more than advertising. Product sits within her organization as a shared function across marketing and technology, giving her influence over the digital tools customers use to search for products, plan projects, and shop through the app. At Home Depot, the path to purchase often begins there—on…
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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff turned his earnings call into a vodcast. Why other Fortune 500 CEOs might follow
All the world’s a stage. Now that’s even true of the usually dull quarterly earnings call. In February, Salesforce founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff turned his routine fourth-quarter earnings call into an influencer-style production. Clad in a black leather jacket and seated high above San Francisco in the Salesforce Tower, Benioff streamed his financial updates…
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GameStop’s billionaire CEO is an entrepreneur without a college degree who cofounded Chewy. Now he has his sights set on buying eBay for $56 billion
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is a billionaire entrepreneur who is known for taking big risks. Yet, his biggest challenge may be his attempt to revive the struggling gaming retail chain. With GameStop’s unsolicited $56 billion offer to buy eBay this week, Cohen, who has an estimated net worth of $5 billion, has once again been…
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GameStop wants to buy eBay for $56 billion. Wall Street has one big question
It’s easy to see why GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen wants to get his hands on eBay so much that the company is offering $56 billion to buy the e-commerce player at a 20% premium. Cohen made the unsolicited offer for eBay, which is multiple times larger than GameStop by both revenue and market capitalization, over…
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Investors endorse Greg Abel—even as Berkshire crowd thins without Buffett as CEO. ‘This was definitely the meeting with the deepest insights’
At Greg Abel’s first annual meeting as Berkshire Hathaway CEO this weekend, the arena was about half as full and the tone was more business-focused—but by and large, investors gave the new CEO a thumbs up. After 60 years as CEO of the conglomerate which owns everything from Dairy Queen to insurer Geico, Warren Buffett…
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Occidental Petroleum’s CEO transition puts a spotlight on the foreign post advantage
Occidental Petroleum’s next chief executive began his career far from the Houston headquarters. On May 1, Occidental announced that COO Richard Jackson will succeed Vicki Hollub as CEO upon her retirement in June. Hollub, who became CEO in 2016, was the first woman to lead a major U.S. oil company, a landmark appointment in an…