{"id":1778,"date":"2026-05-06T04:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T04:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/?p=1778"},"modified":"2026-05-06T04:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T04:48:14","slug":"a-jittery-ceo-crowd-at-milken-looks-abroad-for-growth-and-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/?p=1778","title":{"rendered":"A jittery CEO crowd at Milken looks abroad for growth\u2014and answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2274057566.jpg?w=2048\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Good morning<\/strong> from the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, where leaders from around the world are talking about the innovation and trends shaping society. For a finance-heavy crowd, the focus is often on money and where it can be deployed to have the most impact. A down day in the markets may have dampened some spirits on site, along with fighting in the Strait of Hormuz, concerns over how the AI revolution plays out, private credit risk, and a sense that the world is being reordered in ways that might not benefit the U.S. With the Beverly Hilton under construction, there were few public places to sit and limited space to network. \u201cThis feels like a high school fire drill,\u201d one CEO said as we clustered in the lobby. Food for thought:<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Going global.<\/strong> Yes, the U.S. remains a resilient market where everyone wants to invest. That part we know. I sought out people like Kaan Terzio?lu, Group CEO of VEON, a Dubai-based telecom and digital services provider in emerging markets like Pakistan and Bangladesh. \u201cThese countries are always seen as risks. Pakistan is not an oil-producing country; it\u2019s a data-producing country,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Bangladesh is a country of almost 180 million people where women are totally engaged in economic development. I\u2019m very bullish about the future of Bangladesh.\u201d I\u2019ve heard a lot of optimism about investing in emerging economies. Bruce Flatt of Brookfield Asset Management, for one, is doubling down on investing in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Is China the grown-up now?<\/strong> Writer Niall Ferguson argued that China is fighting a proxy war in Iran, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told the Milken crowd that China should not have his most advanced chips. But I also heard executives extolling the virtues of China\u2019s cars, the clarity of its mission, the optimism of its people, and the partnerships it\u2019s forging with U.S. allies. It\u2019s a country that deems electricity, water, and AI to be basic household utilities. A U.K.-based executive told me that they\u2019re as open to doing deals with China as with the U.S. right now.\u00a0\u201cOn the AI front, we can\u2019t afford to wait.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ted Cruz on breaking the party line.<\/strong> I spoke with Sen. Cruz (R\u2013Texas) about partnering with Democrats on issues and opposing the Trump Administration when it was contemplating a rescue of now-defunct Spirit Airlines. \u201cI spoke out early and vocally against the government taking 90% of the shares of Spirit Airlines. Government bailouts are almost always a mistake and the federal government doesn\u2019t know a damn thing about running an airline,\u201d he told me. \u201cLast week, I had dinner with Howard Lutnik, who\u2019s a good friend and the leading proponent of the bailout idea. I told him it would be a better idea to put $500 million on the floor, pour gasoline on it, and light it on fire. At least you\u2019d get some warmth from that, and you could roast marshmallows.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Top leadership news<\/h3>\n<p><b>Understanding GameStop\u2019s unsolicited offer for eBay<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">GameStop\u00a0CEO Ryan Cohen <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">made<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> an unsolicited $56 billion offer to acquire eBay, a 20% premium for the e-commerce giant, which dwarfs GameStop in size. He&#8217;s betting that a GameStop-eBay tie-up could turn eBay, into \u201csomething worth hundreds of billions of dollars.\u201d Wall Street, however, thinks eBay may be better off remaining independent as its turnaround starts to take hold.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Anthropic\u2019s new partners<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Anthropic, in partnership with Blackstone, Hellman &amp; Friedman, and Goldman Sachs, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">announced<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> a new AI-native enterprise services firm backed by roughly $1.5 billion. The venture aims to embed Claude directly into the core operations of mid-sized companies, competing with major consulting firms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Greg Abel holds first Berkshire annual meeting<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Greg Abel <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">hosted<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> his first annual meeting as Berkshire Hathaway CEO over the weekend. Fewer investors attended than in Warren Buffett&#8217;s era, but one attendee said &#8220;any concerns about Greg taking over for Warren were absolutely put to rest.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The markets<\/h3>\n<p><b>S&amp;P 500<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> futures are up 0.32% this morning. The last session closed down 0.41%. The <\/span><b>STOXX Europe 600<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> was up 0.53% in early trading. <\/span><b>The U.K.\u2019s FTSE 100<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> was down 0.94% in early trading.<\/span><b> Markets in Japan, South Korea, and China <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">are closed today.<\/span><b> Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">was down 0.76%.<\/span><b> India\u2019s NIFTY 50 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\">is down 0.29%.<\/span><b> Bitcoin<\/b><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> was at $80K.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Around the watercooler<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The dark side of the American work ethic: widespread sleep deprivation, linked to obesity, depression, even early death<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Tristan Bove<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">America is lucky it\u2019s no longer a manufacturing powerhouse\u2014it\u2019s what\u2019s protecting the U.S. economy from the worst of the oil shock, top economist says<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Sasha Rogelberg<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">BofA throws cold water on AI apocalypse panic: 60% of today\u2019s jobs didn\u2019t exist in 1940<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Nick Lichtenberg<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">China stopped issuing new robotaxi licenses over a glitch. America can\u2019t stop them from rolling into active shooter situations<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> by Catherina Gioino<\/span><\/p>\n<p>CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#jittery #CEO #crowd #Milken #growthand #answers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning from the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, where leaders from around the world are talking about the innovation and trends shaping society. For a finance-heavy crowd,&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1144,369,1411,2947,3217,3215,3216],"class_list":["post-1778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-answers","tag-ceo","tag-ceo-daily","tag-crowd","tag-growthand","tag-jittery","tag-milken"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}