![Literary Hub » “A Person Should Be in Love Most of the Time.” An[other] Ode to Grace Paley](https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grace-paley.jpg "Literary Hub » “A Person Should Be in Love Most of the Time.” An[other] Ode to Grace Paley")
Good morning. Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell writing from New York this morning.
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to hate extinction.” That’s the framing FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam uses to motivate his troops, particularly in unpredictable times. Subramaniam has dubbed the recent supply chain disruption brought on by geopolitical conflict, tariffs, and more as a moment of “re-globalization.” And, as a company that moves almost 19 million packages per day, FedEx is on the front lines of it.
I spoke to Subramaniam in June at FedEx’s Memphis headquarters for Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors podcast to learn how he’s leading through it and what he’s seeing around the corner. We also spoke about his transition to the top job after a multi-decade ascent from an entry-level FedEx position.
Subramaniam, the second CEO in the company’s 53-year history, is operating for the first time without his mentor and sounding board. One year ago, FedEx’s founder, Fred Smith, died at the age of 80. Taking the reins from a legendary founder—as Subramaniam did in 2022—is a great privilege, he told me. “I always say that I can see far because I’m standing on the shoulders of a giant,” he said. That giant had groomed Subramaniam for the top job for years, as he rose through the ranks and served stints as FedEx’s president and chief operating officer.
But as any CEO will tell you, even the most carefully planned leadership transition isn’t easy. “When the time came, I said, ‘I can do this,’ ” Subramaniam recalled. “But no, the whole thing changed … This is a whole different level.” As requests and demands came in from all sides, Subramaniam found himself having to say no—a lot. To stay focused on what mattered most, he set aside time to create his own CEO job description and KPIs. One of those was to be a guardian of the culture that the company’s founder built.
He recounted a conversation with Smith when he stepped into the CEO role: “I told him that a lot of things might change—whether we have new technology, [we] may have new people, we may buy new companies,” he recalled. “But one thing that is not going to change is the FedEx culture, and that’s why I came to work here in the first place.
You can listen to our full conversation—including the unlikely origins of FedEx’s AI-powered data business, which came from a young employee directly to the CEO—here.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
New York pauses new AI data centers
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Tuesday creating a year-long moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, the first statewide freeze of its kind. Hochul said that the order ensures that “when companies succeed because of New York, New Yorkers succeed too.”
Jamie Dimon’s grim warning
JPMorgan Chase reported record quarterly revenue, yet CEO Jamie Dimon flagged rising risks of a bubbly market on the earnings call. “It’s getting close to as good as it gets,” Dimon said, adding that “we just don’t know how long it’s going to last.”
Inheriting the family businesses
Bank of America data shows 23% of businesses among wealthy Americans are now inherited versus just 11% purchased in 2026, a reversal from 2022 when purchases far outpaced inheritance. MIT Sloan professor Jonathan Parker told Fortune that wealth concentration is deepening, companies are staying private longer, and estate tax rules make it more beneficial to pass down assets than sell them.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are up 0.23% this morning. The last session closed up 0.38%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.06% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.17% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 1.49%. South Korea’s KOSPI was up 6.24%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.20%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 1.40%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.12%. Bitcoin was up at $65K.
Around the watercooler
A new FCC proposal could spell the end of the burner phone. Even if you don’t use one, privacy experts say you should be worried anyway by Catherina Gioino
Ramp’s billionaire CEO ignores résumés and Ivy League degrees—he’s more interested in engineers who built Minecraft servers as teens by Sydney Lake
Goldman economist offers a reality check on AI adoption: it took 15 years for computers to really show up in the data by Nick Lichtenberg
Mitsubishi takes over $7.5 billion in U.S. natural gas fields from Aethon, deepening Japanese bet on LNG and the AI boom by Jordan Blum
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.
