- In today’s CEO Daily: Fortune publishes its 2026 Most Powerful Women list.
- The big leadership story: CEOs are starting to rethink their predictions of an AI jobs apocalypse.
- The markets: Mixed globally after the S&P 500 hits another high.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. When Jane Fraser became CEO of
Citigroup five years ago, she took over an institution struggling with dysfunction, from cumbersome IT systems to a complacent culture that had produced
embarrassing and
costly mistakes. Some held her up as an example of the “
glass cliff,” where women break through the glass ceiling to get top roles under circumstances that make it almost impossible to succeed. But Fraser did succeed, turning a sprawling bank behemoth into a more
streamlined and high-performing company. As a result, Fraser is No. 1 on the
2026 Fortune Most Powerful Women list that was published this morning.
It’s been a tough journey and, as Fraser tells my colleague Claire Zillman in
this accompanying feature, there’s more to do in terms of shedding jobs and underperforming parts of the portfolio. But with a stock price that’s up by more than two-thirds over the past year, investors clearly believe that she can do it.
The women on this year’s list, now in its 29th year, oversee a combined 11.8 million employees and $7.3 trillion in annual revenue. They also hold 180 board seats and work across 20 countries and territories. In addition to measuring leaders by the size and health of their businesses, we evaluated their influence, innovation, career trajectories, and efforts to make business better.
As
Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Editor Emma Hinchliffe notes in her opening essay, this year’s ranking highlights the rise of women in realms from AI to Big Oil. Hinchliffe suggests keeping an eye on the women CFOs at leading AI companies, from Sarah Friar at OpenAI to Amy Hood at Microsoft: “They are making spending decisions that will determine the future of their companies, this technology, and even the global economy.”
One way to do that is to subscribe to Sheryl Estrada’s
CFO Daily newsletter. For a deeper dive on some of the women on this year’s list, check out Ellie Austin’s
profile of
Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick and Hinchliffe’s
profile of Sam’s Club CEO Latriece Watkins.
And speaking of potential glass cliffs,
Meg O’Neill has her hands full as the new CEO of
BP. Chairman Albert Manifold
was ousted yesterday over “conduct issues.” O’Neill became the first woman to run BP in April after Murray Auchincloss stepped down amid shareholder pressure. He got that job in 2024 when Bernard Looney was
fired for serious misconduct. BP has underperformed its Big Oil peers since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which CEO Tony Hayward lost his job after saying
“I would like my life back” in response to the tragedy.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com