CEO North America, April-May-June 2024

Which Way Next?

CEO North America / April – May – June 2024

As we embarked on the start of 2024, most investors, economists, business leaders and everyday consumers around the globe were hoping for a new age of interest rate cuts to begin. So far, that hope has, for the most part, remained just that-a hope.

And while central banks from most major developed economies closed out 2023 with a blitz of policy meetings in December that effectively shut the books on the aggressive rate hikes that had dominated the economic and financial landscape since 2022, those subsequent and much-anticipated cuts have yet to materialize.

So what can we expect from the rest of 2024? To start with, those illusive rate cuts may still be in the stars. The Fed knows that keeping interest rates restrictive for longer than necessary risks a harsher outcome, leading to a rapid slowdown in economic activity, a painful rise in unemployment and a recession we have managed to dodge so far, despite that scenario being the more traditional end to rate-hike cycles.

Also, inflation may finally be tamed, or at least moderated, as consumer spending appears to be decelerating. This downturn should begin to normalize, and a robust, pro-business landscape should be on the horizon.

With all that in mind, business leaders will have to make some serious decisions on investment and expansion, cutbacks and staff reshufflings, as well as coming to terms with the new AI reality in the workplace. So in this edition of CEO-NA, we have chosen in our At the Front segment to focus on business leadership qualities, with a lesson on crisis management from Edelman, a Standford Business Insight review on diverse leadership styles and the Bank of International Settlements’ perception of how U.S. companies set the pace for dealing with still-sky-high interest rates. There is also an article from the Harvard Business Review on how to select top job candidates with critical thinking skills and tips from MIT Sloane on how to nudge employee diversity.

In our At the Back section, we play around with new economic buzz words and get some interesting insights from a CEO Project leader on how difficult it can be to take a company global.

The Editor

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