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CEOs are embracing ‘real world’ interest rates

Diane Brady, Nicholas Gordon
·2-min read
Samuel Corum—Bloomberg via Getty Images

Good morning.

A lot of people were happy to see U.S. inflation ease last month—although emotions may be running high at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for different reasons; someone released Consumer Price Index and real earnings data half an hour early yesterday. Oops! Now, the gaze has shifted to the Fed for some signal on whether April’s 3.4% inflation growth is modest enough to cut the 5.3% key interest rate that’s been in place since July 2022 after inflation peaked at 9.1%.

While more than 75% of CEOs expect interest rates to ease by the end of September, according to Fortune’s latest CEO poll in collaboration with Deloitte (which sponsors this newsletter), expectations are modest.

“The environment in 2020 and 2021 was irrational with zero interest rates,” Chen Amit, CEO of Tipalti, a finance automation company, told me yesterday. “Now, we're back in the real world … We’re seeing interest rates that we can earn money on, but also growth as our customers grow.”

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Interest rates matter, of course, which is why we’ve invited San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President and CEO Mary Daly to speak at Fortune Brainstorm Tech summit in Park City, Utah, from July 15 to 17. (You can learn more here.) But rates are a symptom of the economy and a lever that business leaders can’t control.

Today, I invite you to join us at the Fortune Future of Finance conference via livestream, starting at 10 a.m. ET, to hear about the trends, technologies, and players reshaping the industry. I’ll be talking with Mike Cagney, the former CEO of SoFi who’s disrupting and democratizing finance as CEO at Figure Markets, a decentralized trading platform powered by blockchain technology. I’ll also be exploring trends in alternative investing with PJT Partners’ Andrew Shapiro and Tripp Shriner of Point72 Private Investments. And we will debate innovative solutions to prepare the next generation for financial success with Tom Davidson, founder and CEO of EVERFI from Blackbaud, David Nason, COO of TIAA, and Vanessa Okwuraiwe, a principal at Edward Jones. That’s just a taste; here’s the full agenda.

We often describe our Fortune events as live journalism because it’s another platform for our reporting and storytelling. My colleague Emma Hinchliffe’s interview with E. Jean Carroll at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women dinner earlier this week is one example. But it’s also a platform for connections and conversation, as we had last night at a dinner for C-suite leaders driving sustainability, impact and ESG initiatives at their companies. Like their counterparts in finance, these executives face daunting business challenges, but the innovations are inspiring. Hope you can join in the conversation.

More news below.

Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com