Business

These co-CEOs swear by splitting the job: ‘The demands on a modern CEO are close to unsustainable’

Published

4 months ago

October 5, 2025

Active listening. Shared responsibilities. Pre-planned forgiveness. If the tenets of AlixPartners’ co-CEO relationship sound a lot like those of a married couple who have gone through a lot of therapy, well, you’re not far off.

AlixPartners co-CEOs David Garfield and Rob Hornby were promoted to lead the 2,500-person global consulting firm in February, but previously had worked together for some 14 years, which both say was vital. “Having prior work experience together makes a huge difference,” AlixPartners co-CEO David Garfield told Fortune about sharing the top job with Rob Hornby. “I genuinely believe that our decisions are better as a result of collaborating on them than they would be if we were making them independently.”

Garfield is based in New York and has decades of experience in corporate strategy, shareholder value creation, and the commercial side of the global consulting business. Hornby is based in the UK and spends 30% of his time in New York. He has a soup-to-nuts background in AI, digital innovation, and both startup and global operating environments and previously led the firm’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. At the same time, both understand the tech and commercial sides and have a solid decade and a half of working together under their belts.

The geographic separation is a strategic advantage for the co-CEOs. Between them, they maintain 20 hours of leadership coverage across time zones—a feat that would be unsustainable long-term for a single CEO.

“We’re co-responsible for everything,” Hornby said. “So we share responsibility for all outcomes for everything. But that doesn’t mean that we are equally involved in everything—because we have different expertise.”

They operate under a single umbrella of “pre-planned forgiveness,” so if Hornby makes a decision that Garfield wouldn’t have made during the time they aren’t overlapping, there’s no harm done. The same is true for Hornby.

“Then there are some things we just have to say, ‘That’s too big. That’s something we need to talk about,’” said Hornby. “And we will reserve the right to take that offline, speak to each other and come back to whoever is asking for a decision.”

That conversation always involves active listening, said Garfield. At this point, they trust each other enough not to lobby based on preconceived notions but instead they get each other’s perspectives on the table.

“Ironically, I think it gets us to the answer faster because we don’t have to spend time building up a case,” said Garfield. “Having shared values makes a huge difference and having a foundation of trust makes a huge difference.”

While it’s going to plan for Garfield and Hornby, other leadership experts are more wary about splitting up the top job. Yet, as the world grows more complicated and the CEO role becomes increasingly complex, two might be better than one—but only if the combination is nearly flawless and interpersonal dynamics don’t derail the relationship, experts said. In the past three weeks, Comcast, Oracle, and now Spotify have all announced CEO transitions involving a co-CEO leadership structure with varying executive chair oversight on the board.

“There’s so much happening both externally and internally and organizations are going through constant change and it’s not letting up,” said Susan Sandlund, a managing director at Pearl Meyer who leads the leadership consulting practice. “It could potentially make sense to have co-CEOs if the company actually has a need for it but I wouldn’t say it should be the norm. I think it’s an exception and you have to have a pretty good business case for it.”

Data provider Esgauge reveals there are only eight co-CEOs currently operating in the Russell 3000 among 245 CEO transitions so far in 2025. During the past decade, the highest number of co-CEOs serving at a single time among companies in the index was 17 in 2023.

Part of the reason it’s been so unpopular historically is that “a lot can go wrong,” noted Sandlund.

When things get awkward with co-CEOs

The most obvious trap a duo can fall into? Power struggles, with one executive wanting to be the standout, said Shawn Cole, president of search form Cowen Partners. In meetings with clients, investors, or the board, one might talk over the other one, making things painfully awkward. Factions can form. Inconsistent messaging can confuse the leadership team; decision making can slow down. And there’s always the risk of confusion about authority, said Cole, who has been called in to sort out situations after a co-leadership structure has gone to pot. When it fails, Cole chalks it up to interpersonal issues and a perception about broken promises, especially if one of the co-CEOs was under an impression it was temporary or that they would ultimately get the CEO role all to themselves.

“It’s very much like a marriage,” Cole said. “It takes a lot of communication to make it work.” And just like a marriage, sometimes outside offers are too appealing to pass up.

“They’re always going to be drawn to other sole CEO opportunities,” he said, which is another reason co-CEO-ship doesn’t often last, in his view. He’s skeptical about the recent appointments, noting that some look like short-term solutions to problems that have emerged in succession plans. Sometimes boards have difficulty making a decision, or executives might be lured elsewhere, he said. “These just don’t seem like long-term solutions,” said Cole.

Egon Zehnder’s Chuck Gray, who advises boards on CEO succession, noted that the way different people react to power “is not always predictable.” Sometimes it’s for the good, but not in every case.

“I’ve seen people who, when they became CEO, they’ve changed,” said Gray, co-head of Egon Zehnder’s North American board and CEO practice. “When you have two people sharing power, you don’t always know how they’ll react to being that type of structure.”

Gray observed that defining “equal” in a co-CEO relationship is nearly impossible. “Is it equal number of direct reports? Is it equal size P&Ls? Is it the same size office?” he said. “One line of business is bigger than the other, one has responsibility for all the P&Ls and all the corporate functions—will they feel equal?”

Gray noted a board member once requested that he stop her immediately if the board ever considered a co-CEO leadership structure ever again.

CEOs say they are lonely

Still, the CEO role itself may be driving renewed interest in power sharing and Gray said his firm plans to research splitting CEO roles in more depth. He’s been telling clients recently that “we’ve gotten to a point now where the CEO job is almost an impossible job for one human to have.” In board searches, CEOs have been asking for independent corporate directors to be sitting CEOs who have dealt with the ongoing disruptions since the fall of 2019.

“Wehn I talk to a lot of CEOs, you can just see the stress and the strain,” Gray said. In theory, if you can share some of the burden with someone, the job could be more sustainable, he said. Plus, a lot of CEOs say—and Gray noted this was a cliche—but CEOs say they’re lonely. Having another person could lessen the load, he said.

The key is having distinctly different roles, complementary skills, shared values, clear decision making rights, and genuine trust, experts agreed. More importantly, both people have to actually want to share the role, which is a trait that doesn’t always align with personalities drawn to being a CEO.

“It takes a very mature person,” said Sandlund. “Certain CEOs today, no way in hell would they be able to share power. Some days one will shine and the other can’t get their nose bent out of shape over it… You are truly sharing the limelight and have to be OK with that.”

Back at AlixPartners, Garfield and Hornby both said they’re OK with it. Garfield noted it’s not right for every company culture, but two people can have a wider range if they have the right chemistry and match. “I think the demands on a modern CEO are close to unsustainable,” said Hornby. “If you’re a singular CEO, I think it’s a pretty tough job nowadays. Co-CEOs, if you can meet the conditions of trust and relationship, just provides you with a lot more bandwidth to deal with a complicated world.”

Source link

Business

Down Arrow Button Icon

Published

17 minutes ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

China has fulfilled its initial commitment to buy 12 million metric tons of soybeans from the U.S., but it’s not clear if the trade agreement announced in October can withstand President Donald Trump’s ever-shifting trade policy as American farmers are still dealing with high production costs.

Earlier this month, Trump said he would impose 25% tariffs on any country that buys from Iran, which would include China. Then last weekend he threatened to impose 10% tariffs on eight of America’s closest allies in Europe if they continue to oppose his efforts to acquire Greenland.

So the administration’s trade policy continues to change quickly, and Iowa State University agricultural economist Chad Hart said that could undermine the trade agreement with China and jeopardize the commitment by the world’s largest soybean buyer to purchase 25 million metric tons of American soybeans in each of the next three years.

“Those new tariffs — what does that mean for this agreement? Does it throw it out? Is it still binding? That’s sort of the game here now,” Hart said.

Beijing paused any purchase of U.S. soybeans last summer during its trade war with Washington but agreed to resume buying from American soybean farmers after Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in South Korea and agreed to a truce.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the purchasing milestone China has met in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business on Tuesday from the sidelines of a major economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Bessent met with his Chinese counterpart, Vice President He Lifeng. Bessent said China remains committed.

“He told me that just this week they completed their soybean purchases, and we’re looking forward to next year’s 25 million tons,” Bessent said. “They did everything they said they were going to do.”

Last fall, preliminary data from the Department of Agriculture cast doubts on whether China would live up to the agreement because it was slow to begin purchasing American soybeans and there is a lag before the purchases show up in the official numbers.

On Tuesday, the USDA data showed that China had bought more than 8 million tons of U.S. soybeans by Jan. 8, and its daily reports indicated that China placed several more orders since then, ranging from 132,000 tons to more than 300,000 tons.

China has shifted much of its soybean purchases over to Brazil and Argentina in recent years to diversify its sources and find the cheapest deals. Last year, Brazilian beans accounted for more than 70% of China’s imports, while the U.S. share was down to 21%, World Bank data shows.

Trump is planning to send roughly $12 billion in aid to U.S. farmers to help them withstand the trade war, but farmers say the aid won’t solve all their problems as they continue to deal with the soaring costs of fertilizer, seeds and labor that make it hard to turn a profit right now. Soybean farmers will get $30.88 per acre while corn farmers will receive $44.36 per acre. Another crop hit hard when China stopped buying was sorghum, and those farmers will get $48.11 per acre. The amounts are based on a USDA formula on the cost of production.

That and uncertainty about trade markets and how much farmers will receive for their crops has even some of the most optimistic farmers worried, said Cory Walters, who is an associate professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Agricultural Economics. Soybean prices jumped up above $11.50 per bushel after the agreement was announced, but the price has since fallen to about $10.56 per bushel on Tuesday. So prices are close to where they were a year ago and aren’t high enough to cover most farmers’ costs.

“Everything is changing — the land rental market, the fertilizer market, the seed market and it’s all pinching the farmer when they go to do their cash flows. The ability to make a decision is tougher now because of all the uncertainty in the market,” Walters said.

___

This story has been updated to correct that Bessent spoke on Fox Business, not Fox News.

___

Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Didi Tang and Fatima Hussein contributed from Washington.

Source link

Business

Wall Street is talking about whether Trump’s Greenland plan will end U.S. ‘primacy’

Published

49 minutes ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

Investors reacted emphatically to President Trump’s insistence that he won’t back down on his plan to take over Greenland: They hate it. The S&P 500 fell 2% yesterday, even though 81% of its companies have beaten their Q4 earnings expectations so far. The dollar fell off a cliff, losing nearly 1% of its value against a basket of foreign currencies. U.S. bond prices weakened modestly. Gold, the safe-haven investment, hit yet another new record high.

The “sell America” trade is in full effect, in other words. S&P futures were up marginally this morning, suggesting that the bloodletting has been put on hold until traders hear what Trump has to say at the World Economic Forum in Davos later today. Trump offered a small ray of hope before he left for Switzerland when he told NewsNation, “We’ll probably be able to work something out.”

The drama has started a global debate about ending America’s “primacy” as the place for investors to hold assets. Increasingly, analysts and economists are talking about hedging against U.S. risk and deploying their capital in markets which are more predictable. The fact that the S&P 500 underperformed last year compared to markets in Asia and Europe is helping make the case. It’s a rerun in 2026, too. The S&P is down 0.71% year-to-date, while the Europe STOXX 600 is up 0.69% and the South Korean KOSPI is up an astonishing 14%.

“Until the US no longer ‘threatens’ with the use of tariffs … the so-called ‘primacy’ of the U.S. remains at risk of further dissolution, and with it an upending of the geopolitical alignments that have upheld markets in recent years,” Macquarie analysts Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry wrote in a recent note to clients.

Their argument—perhaps one of the most extreme ones that Fortune has ever seen in an investment bank research note—is that when the U.S. goes through a major political convulsion a period of stagnation follows, and thus investors should begin moving their money away from America:

“A line can be traced, for example, from the failure of the U.S. in the Vietnam War and the follow-on decline in U.S, primacy, to the U.S.’s gold reserve depletion, and the subsequent end of the fixed exchange rate system under the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. The ‘fiat money’ era that followed was associated with a large decline in the real value of the USD, from 1971 until 1981, as well as a period of inflation and recessions across the 1970s,” they said.

“We should worry about the USD and its relation to other currencies, too. If the reserve status of the USD does depend on the U.S. role in the world—as guarantor of security and a rules-based order—then the events of the past year, and of the past three weeks, in particular, carry the seeds of a reallocation away from the USD, and the search for alternatives, especially among reserve managers. So far, allocators have only found solace in gold, but they may eventually move toward other fiat currencies, too.”

Wall Street got a glimpse of what this might look like when the Danish retirement savings fund AkademikerPension said yesterday that it would sell its $100 million stake in U.S. bonds by the end of the week.

So far, traders are flinching at Trump’s actions. But we haven’t yet seen the kind of full-scale capital flight away from U.S. assets that might, for instance, raise inflation, interest rates or trigger a recession. But the mere fact that Wall Street is discussing it is significant.

Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos told clients in a note at the weekend: “Europe owns Greenland, it also owns a lot of Treasuries. We spent most of last year arguing that for all its military and economic strength, the U.S. has one key weakness: it relies on others to pay its bills via large external deficits. Europe, on the other hand, is America’s largest lender: European countries own $8 trillion of US bonds and equities, almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined. In an environment where the geoeconomic stability of the western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part. Danish pension funds were one of the first to repatriate money and reduce their dollar exposure this time last year. With USD exposure still very elevated across Europe, developments over the last few days have potential to further encourage dollar rebalancing.”

This note was internally controversial. Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing had to call U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to disavow it.

The CEO does not stand by it but Saravelos’s colleagues may be more sympathetic. Jim Reid and his team, who religiously send an early morning email summarizing market action, did not send their email this morning. The bank told Fortune, “Deutsche Bank Research is independent in their work, therefore views expressed in individual research notes do not necessarily represent the view of the bank’s management.”

In fact, the idea that Europe might move out of U.S. assets is a commonplace inside investment banks right now. At UBS, Paul Donovan told clients earlier this week, “The implications of additional tariffs are more U.S. inflation pressures and a further erosion of the USD’s status as a reserve currency. So far, bond investors do not seem to be taking the threats too seriously.”

This morning he said that the most likely scenario wouldn’t be investors selling U.S. debt but simply refusing to buy new debt, thus reducing the flow of funds that the America is dependent on.

In a tariff war, one under-discussed weapon at Europe’s disposal is its Anti-Coercion Instrument: It has the power to ban U.S. services businesses from the E.U.

“U.S. services exports to the E.U. were $295B in 2024, equivalent to 0.9% of US GDP, suggesting the harm could be much greater if the E.U. pulled this relatively new lever at its disposal than if it responded simply with tariffs, though its economy would be hurt more too,” Pantheon Macroeconomics analysts Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen told clients.

“In short, nobody would win from a new trade war, but the E.U. has ample scope to harm the U.S. if the Greenland situation escalates,” they said.

Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:

S&P 500 futures were up 0.19% this morning. The last session closed down 2.06%.
STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.4% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was flat in early trading.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.41%.
China’s CSI 300 was flat.
The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.49%.
India’s NIFTY 50 was down 0.3%.
Bitcoin was down to $89K.

Source link

Business

Match Group says a ‘readiness paradox’ is crippling Gen Z in dating

Published

1 hour ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

Gen Z is sometimes criticized for its proclivity toward slang or its approach to the workforce. But this generation is facing challenges very different from those of their elders. The young adults are slowing down their pursuit of the American Dream of finding “the one,” owning a home, and having kids.

But it’s not because Gen Z doesn’t want to find love, according to a report by Match Group and Harris Poll shared exclusively with Fortune. In fact, their survey results from 2,500 randomly selected U.S. adults shows 80% of Gen Z say they believe they’ll find true love, making them the most optimistic generation about finding love. Yet, only 55% of Gen Z feel like they’re actually ready for partnership.

Therein lies the “readiness paradox,” a phenomenon that paralyzes Gen Z from taking that initial step toward a serious relationship, and subsequently toward marriage and having children. While more than half of Gen Z says they feel lonely despite having online connections, 48% of Gen Z women report feeling additional pressure to enter a relationship for “the right reason,” rather than solely to avoid loneliness. This cycle traps young people in loneliness, which is amplified by social media pressures, like the dread of “hard-launching” a relationship.

“It makes total sense to be stuck in that paralysis of, I want this, I want a relationship, but I don’t feel ready for it, and so I don’t do it,” Chine Mmegwa, head of strategy, corporate development, and business operations at Match Group, told Fortune. “What they’re afraid of is failing. What they’re afraid of is that the other person on the other side isn’t ready.”

Match Group defines this phenomenon as a “self-reinforcing cycle” in which Gen Zers set a high bar for readiness for a relationship, then feel anxious about being alone, then crave new relationships, believe they’re not ready for it and wait longer, experience more loneliness, and then the cycle repeats.

And some of this cycle stems from the fact that Gen Z prioritizes investing in personal growth, therapy, and defining success over other generations. Nearly 60% of Gen Z women say therapy is essential to relationship success, according to the Match Group report, and almost 50% say that setting and respecting healthy boundaries is a prime indication of being ready for a romantic relationship. And as a result, they may be more likely to delay dating.

This report serves as a launchpad for Match Group and other dating app companies to rethink how to best serve Gen Z consumers, some of which had ditched the apps when they did have features they could relate to. But now Tinder has introduced more casual modes for Gen Zers to meet each other, like through its double-date feature and college mode where the generation can meet more people with the same relationship goals in mind.

That’s a step in the right direction for a generation that is reverting back to a desire to meet in real life.

“This is the way Gen Z wants to connect,” Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff previously said. “They want to vibe their way through meeting people.”

Reprioritizing milestones

Unlike how some other reports about Gen Z love life have portrayed the generation, they’re not rejecting romance. Instead, they’re reshuffling life’s timeline amid economic and social strains.

Match Group’s report shows nearly half of Gen Z say they’re not ready for relationships now, and 75% aren’t rushing into one. But, again, 80% say they believe they’ll find true love.

“They believe that when they work on themselves, their relationships become stronger,” according to the Match Group report. “And they are more likely to wait until they can put their best selves forward to give themselves the highest chance of relationship success.”

Although that may sound like worrisome news for a company trying to appeal to the latest generation, Mmegwa didn’t shy away from the challenge.

Gen Z is “still looking to our products to solve real big issues. And they are still looking to our products and to dating to solve the things that are most important to them” she said. “It’s just a question of when and how they will use our products that [is] very different from prior generations.”

This generation also has a very different view of how happy their own parents’ and grandparents’ relationships are: Only 37% described those relationships as happy, and 34% of Gen Z women also feel working through issues from past relationships indicates readiness, according to the report.

Social media’s vicious cycle

Being highly inundated by and invested in social media has also exacerbated the readiness paradox. While 46% of Gen Z “soft-launch” relationships versus 27% overall, 81% see it as an ironclad agreement, and dread backlash from a public failure.

It’s different from how other generations view making relationships public: “You can also hard launch and then delete the photos the next day, and it’s okay,” Mmegwa said.

But still, for Gen Z, relationship performance pressure creates a cycle: High readiness bars lead to loneliness, which ultimately leads to them pursuing lower-stakes or casual relationships that rarely escalate into something more serious.

Instagram exacerbates the stall. While 46% of Gen Z “soft-launch” relationships versus 27% overall, 81% who hard-launch see it as an ironclad commitment, dreading public failure. Mmegwa highlighted this generational shift: “You can also hard launch and then delete the photos the next day, and it’s okay.” This “performance pressure” creates a cycle: High readiness bars lead to loneliness (over 50% feel it despite online ties), prompting low-stakes connections that rarely escalate.

“For us, the focus is on how we bring people together and encourage them to return to in-person connections,” Hinge CEO Jackie Jantos previously told Fortune. Hinge is part of Match Group, along with Tinder, Match, and OkCupid.

How Match Group plans to address the readiness paradox

Match Group is planning to meet Gen Z where they are: They’ll keep introducing “low-pressure” tools, like Tinder’s Double Dating feature and College Mode.

“The idea here is really around helping our users have the power to control what they’re looking for in a given moment and be able to find that more easily,” Cleo Long, Tinder’s senior director of global product marketing, previously told Fortune.

Using the report as a roadmap for new product plans, future features could include features like readiness signals, Mmegwa said, and more curated matches will be important.

“It’s no longer a speed and volume game,” she said. “It’s [about] truly making our algorithms help you know yourself better, and then help you know the person on the other side of the connection better.”

Source link